The Knife Thrower's Daughter
by themostrandomfandom
Summary: In the summer of 1898, Santana Lopez joined the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie as it toured the states of the Upper American Midwest. She also fell in love with the knife thrower's daughter.
1. Bread and Circuses

_In the summer of 1898, Santana Lopez joined the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie as it toured the states of the Upper American Midwest. She also fell in love with the knife thrower's daughter._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1: Bread and Circuses<strong>

**Saturday, June 25th, 1898: Tekamah, Nebraska**

The truth is that Santana has never even seen the circus, but Puck says that the truth doesn't matter anymore.

That's what he told Santana when he checked her into a boarding house in Manhattan under his surname two weeks ago and of what he reminded Santana when he finally met up with her again at the depot in Omaha only just this morning.

Now Santana repeats Puck's words like plainsong to herself as she runs over the plan in her mind. It doesn't matter that she isn't a famous fortuneteller from Europe and that she knows nothing about fire dancing. It doesn't matter that she and Puck aren't actually in any way married.

Nothing matters except impressing Puck's employer and getting on the payroll.

Santana owes Puck so much; even if she works for months, she might never be able to repay him.

The countryside outside Santana's window lies low and flat, pleasantly green, if scrubby. The sky in Nebraska seems bigger than the sky in New York, the kind of blue that dye and paint can never exactly replicate in fabrics or on canvas mattes or the sides of buildings. The bigness of the land and air somehow makes Santana feel exposed—like everyone can see her and she has no place to hide. She takes small comfort in the fact that she can only watch the scenery clack by through the safe square of her cabin window for now.

If Puck notices Santana fidgeting, he doesn't say aught about it. Instead, he slumps down in his seat beside her and tugs the brim of his hat lower to cover his eyes so he can sleep. He rests a broad palm on Santana's leg, his touch warm and heavy.

In first class, someone might balk at his boldness, but in this back cabin, no one pays much mind to his action at all.

Santana wishes she could sleep, too, but something trembles deep inside her, nervous as a baby bird, its purple heartbeat close to the raw, pink surface.

* * *

><p>Puck and Santana's train arrives at the Tekamah depot just after noon, and a driver from the circus meets them at the platform. He arranges their luggage in the back of his wagon before helping both Puck and Santana join him on the bench.<p>

Just like Santana suspected on the train, now that she finds herself out of doors and beneath the afternoon glare, the sky feels too big and everything sprawls, unsettlingly open. Save for the depot itself and a few buildings along the main street of Tekamah obscuring her view, Santana can see in all directions, almost to the horizon. The sun pounds down, heating her legs under the heavy calico of her skirts like clay in a kiln. The earth radiates with the warm, even scent of baked dirt and copper.

For his part, the driver ignores both Puck and Santana, focusing instead on steering his mules through a section of grass until they find the road, driving them towards the town just a half-mile or so off from the depot. Puck pulls his hat brim over his eyes again, paying no mind to either Santana or the bumpiness of the ride. With the babble of the depot fading into the distance and only wagon joint-creaks and mule hoof-clops filling the silence otherwise, Santana suddenly feels desperately, impossibly lonely.

The circus wagon passes other wagons along the road, as well as a man on horseback, who gives Santana a nasty look when her eyes meet his. Even after staying at the boarding house, Santana still isn't used to all the unspoken rules she never knew existed until she found herself on her own. Though she's committed the rules to memory now as best she can—painstakingly, to avoid penalties—she still doesn't understand the first thing about them.

The driver smirks at her a little.

She supposes she must look surprised.

Only after a minute does Santana realize that the driver must know how it is, that he is, at least in this one way, like her. She hadn't thought of it before.

Shaken, Santana turns her attention to the town. She sees that Tekamah has a broad, dirt main street lined with brick and wooden storefronts, along which she spots stores, a barber shop, and a church. Somehow, Santana had expected Nebraska to look like the untamed wilderness of one of Mr. Fenimore Cooper's novels, but she finds the place both boringly well-kempt and surprisingly devoid of trees.

Little pockets of people, none of whom look a lick like Santana, mill in twos and threes along the road. As Santana stares into the hoi polloi, she finds other people staring back at her. She tries not to let her eyes linger and instead focuses on where the driver steers the wagon: past the end of the main street, beyond the houses, beyond a small cemetery flowered with moldering whitewashed crosses, to a small, sparse grassland just outside the town.

Coming up along the road, Santana feels her heart thrill inside her chest.

She sees the circus for the first time in her life.

* * *

><p>The wagon hitches to a stop just outside a row of white canvas tents—a small, impermanent city rising up from the plains. At the far side of this city sits a magnificent big top with a blue-striped canopy. Dozens of smaller white tents rise up on the part of the premises closer to Santana, each tent pinioned to the ground by ropes and stakes.<p>

Multiple billboards flag along the center line of the campsite, painted in bawdy parrot hues, announcing the acrobats, Bearded Lady, pachyderms, and "famous Little Malibran of Seville, who can shatter crystal by the clear pitch of her voice alone." The biggest billboard of all flaunts the name of the venue itself: the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie.

Wagons, both ornately decorated and plain, flank various tents, which flap with movements and rebound distant noise, casting long noon shadows, lanky, over the flat earth. The pale canvas of the tents swallows up sunlight and reflects it back brighter above the campsite, creating the illusion of a heavenly circus haloed in white light.

Santana has never seen anything so beautiful or strange before.

Puck jolts as the wagon halts and looks between Santana and the driver, groggy and disoriented, stretching himself out of his nap. He smiles at Santana.

"Welcome to the circus, ladybird," he says, voice scratchy from sleep.

It's the first time he's really spoken to Santana since Omaha.

Puck takes a moment just to smile at Santana and wake himself while she looks back at him.

He is handsome, Santana supposes, a bit too swarthy for his own good, but better off than she is, with an idiot smile when he's really happy and a devilish smirk otherwise. He wears his dark hair shorn short and always seems to have a glint in his eyes. When Santana first met him, he walked with a heavy limp, favoring his left leg, but after eight months under her father's care, he bears no sign of his old injury.

Puck knows his own charm—the trouble is that Santana doesn't. Puck either thinks Santana likes him much more than she does or doesn't care if Santana likes him at all. Ultimately, Santana can't tell which way it is with him, and she doesn't know which option might prove worse for her, in the scheme of things.

The driver lets himself down from the wagon and gives the mule closest to him an appreciate pat on the rear before heading around to the wagon bed, from which he procures Puck's rucksack and Santana's valise. He flashes Puck a questioning look, and Puck shrugs him off, gesturing for the driver to set the bags on the ground. As the driver shuffles to unhitch the mules and lead them away, presumably to a stable or pasture Santana cannot yet see, Puck fixes in on Santana, eyeing her up and down like an artist considering his half-finished portrait. His attention makes Santana nervous.

"What?" she asks.

Her voice sounds sharp in her own ears.

Santana seldom means to snap at Puck, but she somehow ends up snapping at him an awful lot anyhow. Right now she snaps because she feels uneasy for having finally arrived at their destination and also because she dislikes the way Puck keeps staring at her like she's the only glass of lemonade in town on a sweltering day. She considers apologizing to him but doesn't. Puck never seems to mind her tone anyway.

He pokes his tongue between his teeth and says, "Before we go in, let's fix you up a bit, huh?"

"Fix me up?" Santana repeats, not sure what Puck means.

"Yup," says Puck. "First off, we can't have this"—without asking, he reaches up and removes Santana's hat, snatching it off her head and tossing it the ground beside her valise—"and you should wear your hair down. You'll look more exotic."

He snatches at one of the pins keeping Santana's bun in place, but she swats his hand away, annoyed, before she can stop herself.

"I'm sorry. What are you doing?" Santana says, not really sorry at all.

Puck's hand retreats, and he grimaces. "Ow!" he complains, acting much too hurt, given the weakness of the blow. "Ladybird! No gypsy woman wears her hair all trussed up like that! You want to sell this to Mr. Adams or not? This is the circus! You have to show some theatricality!"

Santana takes a minute to consider what Puck tells her, holding herself at arm's length from him. She doesn't know what Puck means by _theatricality_, exactly, but she does know that circus folk have a certain ignominious reputation, for her father told her so when he first took Puck on as his gardener.

Slowly, Santana reaches up to her head and, daintily and with much more dignity than Puck would have afforded her otherwise, slides the pins from her bun, letting her hair down. She then tucks the pins into the hair just behind her ear, hiding them from sight, more than a little indignant as she does so. Immediately, her neck feels hot, her black locks soaking in sun warmth. She shakes her head until her hair lies flat and then runs her fingers through it, combing out the kinks.

Puck stares at Santana in a thirsty way that makes her wish she could be invisible.

"Much better," he says approvingly.

"Anything else?" Santana asks, sounding much bolder than she feels. Without her hat to shield her eyes, Santana has to squint at Puck. He probably thinks she's glaring at him; she probably is, at least a little bit.

"Not unless you got a crystal ball handy," Puck shrugs, hopping down from the wagon, boots landing heavily on the earth, before extending a hand to Santana to help her to the ground, as well. Puck retrieves his rucksack and Santana's valise and hat before giving Santana a second look. "Come on," he says. "It's time for you to join the circus, ladybird."

* * *

><p>Puck leads Santana into camp, his hand on her shoulder, acting as her keel. He steers her through the periwinkle shade in-between tents and the brighter patches of sun on the open stretches of grass, turning her as he needs to. For as much as Santana bristles under Puck's touch, she also feels secretly glad that he doesn't make her trail after him again like he did at the depot in Omaha.<p>

Santana waits to see her first circus person but finds the camp—or at least this section of it—strangely empty; she wonders where they keep all the clowns and acrobats but then hates herself for asking such a stupid question, even in her mind. She hears the low lull of human noise drifting in from somewhere but can't see anyone around the tents.

Shouldn't there be more people at the circus?

Before Santana can ask Puck the whereabouts of the other performers, she and Puck reach a certain tent, bigger than the others surrounding it but much smaller than the big top, and Puck gestures for Santana to stop.

"All right," he says in a low voice. "You remember the plan? Just let me talk to Mr. Adams. He'll probably ask you for a demonstration. All you have to do is read his palm and mumble some mumbo-jumbo and he'll take you on, easy. Don't worry about the fire dancing act yet. It's simple. I'll show you the moves later today or tomorrow, maybe. At the very least, he'll hire you as a cook or a seamstress, seeing as you're my wife now, but, with any luck, he'll take you for a performer—that way, you'll get a bigger bit of the pot come payday. All you have to do is show him what your granny taught you, got it, ladybird?"

"My grandmother never taught me to read palms," Santana reminds him, ignoring the familiar hurt in her chest at the mention of both the old lady and the lessons that she taught.

"Well, Mr. Adams doesn't need to know that, does he? It's like I told you before: Reading palms ain't really about telling the future anyway—it's about telling folks what they want to hear about themselves. Besides, even though you can't read palms, you can read cards. Just put on a good show and we're set."

Puck gives Santana one last once-over, patting down some fly away hairs at the top of her head and smoothing invisible rumples in her sleeve before she dodges away from him, avoiding his touch. He smiles at her, neither idiotic nor devilish—just encouraging.

"You'll do fine," he promises. Without waiting for Santana to respond, Puck turns to the tent, parts the flaps, and sticks his head inside the door. "Mr. Adams?" he calls. "Brought someone to see you!"

Santana doesn't hear anyone reply, but the next thing she knows, Puck grabs her by the wrist and pulls her through the tent flaps anyway.

* * *

><p>It's shady inside the tent but also stuffy and somewhat claustrophobic.<p>

Once Santana's eyes adjust to the sudden change from bright outdoors to dim indoors, it surprises her to find the tent furnished like a sitting room, complete with a settee pushed up against the side wall; a center table; several cushy chairs; and a pretty Oriental rug, woven in burnt oranges, greens, and jewel-toned reds, thrown over the grass.

A haze of peppery, vaguely floral smoke hangs in the tent, stinging Santana's eyes and filling her nose and throat. The smoke shrouds the two human figures in the tent aside from Puck and Santana—one of them seated on the settee at the wall, the other sitting at the center table, right leg crossed over his left at the knee. Both of the men appear considerably older than Puck and nurse clay pipes, taking last puffs as Puck and Santana draw closer to them.

The man at the table stands, dousing his pipe and leaving it behind, and steps forward through the smoke. "Noah," he says, beaming as he clasps Puck by the arm and then claps him on the shoulder. "Aren't you a sight, my boy! You look like you've healed well."

Puck smiles his idiot smile. "Yes, sir. No burn marks or anything," he jokes.

The man chuckles and gives Puck's back another firm clap. "Good, good! I had started to worry you might never return to us. I'm glad to see you well! So I hear you've got yourself a little wife now, hm? I have to say, I never thought I'd see the day you settled down, you scoundrel! Come on, let's meet the unfortunate girl."

The man smiles good-naturedly, turning his attention to Santana, waiting for Puck to make the introduction. The other man stands up from the couch with a grunt and steps over to join the group, as well.

Santana can only assume that the man who called Puck a scoundrel is Mr. Adams, considering that he's the best-dressed fellow in the tent. He wears a tailored green sack coat over a handsome satin vest, an apricot Ascot tied at his neck, and a straw boater atop his head. Even in the low light of the tent, he strikes a bright and vivid figure, like a Monet portrait.

Though he's shorter than Puck, he carries himself in such a way that he seems imposing, almost lionish. He has dark hair and a long face, with severe brows and a well-trimmed beard and mustache framing his small, smirking mouth. When he speaks, his voice booms as if amplified through a bullhorn. His build is burly, and the strong way in which he carries himself reminds Santana of the Greco-Roman wrestlers she used to see sketched in the advertisements of her father's sporting catalogues.

The other man—the one who has yet to speak—is nothing but squat, and, if Santana considers it honestly, repulsive. He wears just a shirt and vest with no jacket to cover his bulbous belly, his sleeves rolled tight to his elbows. Yellow sweat strains the armpits of his shirt, as well as his collar under his neck. He has no tie, but he does sport a small black bowler cap that makes his head somehow seem smaller than it is.

Once he steps to within two feet of Santana, she can actually smell him, the stench of hot flesh, pipe smoke, and poor hygiene hanging all around him. He has beady eyes and a round nose and wears his dark hair clipped short. Acne scars pock his face and his skin looks wet and clammy, even from a safe distance. He furrows his brow at Santana, like she impresses him as little as he impresses her.

"Mr. Adams," Puck says to the man in the green jacket, "I'd like you to meet Santana Puckerman."

Santana can't help but cringe at the sound of his last name in place of hers. It hangs over her, ill-fitted, like her grandmother's dressing coat did when Santana used it for a costume as a child.

_Lopez_, she thinks in her mind, gritting her teeth. _Lopez, Lopez, Lopez._

She must make a sour face because Mr. Adams looks amused at her.

"Santana," he says, turning the name over on his tongue like a new flavor. "Santana. That sounds... Spanish."

Puck nods. "Yes. She comes from the finest Spanish gypsy stock. Her family has lived outside Madrid for—"

Mr. Adams cuts across Puck. "Can we make it Rome, instead?" he says, scratching at his chin.

Santana swallows a gasp, surprised at Mr. Adams' brusqueness.

He circles Santana, as does the other man. They both eye her up and down like auctioneers appraising a horse before they put it to market. Santana feels amazingly self-conscious, more so than she ever has in her life before. She doesn't know what they're looking for in her—some flaw of form or giveaway as to her unworthiness—but she suddenly feels as though everything is wrong with her, like she's either too much or not enough in every possible way.

Her back stiffens and she holds her head up, even though her eyes dart to the back of the tent and the ground and look anywhere but at Mr. Adams. Her fists ball at her sides and her breath catches in her chest. Mr. Adams and the other man don't stare at her the same way Puck does—there's no thirst in their eyes—but somehow their gazes make her feel just as uneasy as do his.

"Rome?" Puck asks, confused.

"Yes," Mr. Adams nods. "It's just that, with the war, Spain is quite unfashionable at the moment. We can't get around Santana's untoward pigmentation, but we can appropriate her a more favorable nationality, wouldn't you say? She doesn't have an accent, does she?"

Mr. Adams doesn't seem to be addressing Puck anymore; his eyes fix on Santana's face, waiting for her to speak.

Santana startles under his attention, not sure how to respond. She reels from the idea that anyone could simply assign her a new nationality, as if it were that easy. If nationality were something a person could change about herself, Santana would have picked a different one three weeks ago, immediately following her father's funeral. She isn't even Spanish in the first place—that's a lie Puck made up to impress Mr. Adams—and she certainly isn't Italian.

"I haven't," she splutters.

Mr. Adams nods, brow furrowed. "Well, can you feign one?"

"Pardon?" Santana asks, confused as to whether Mr. Adams would prefer her to have an accent or not. Her whole body flutters with nerves. She feels her pulse pick up in her neck and bites her lip. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Nobody wants an American-born fortuneteller," Mr. Adams says bluntly. He scrutinizes Santana a second longer and then repeats, very calmly, "Can you or can you not affect an accent?"

Santana searches inside herself, wondering if she can. She's never pretended such a thing before. She thinks of her grandmother, of her rounded t-sounds and wide vowels, and nods gingerly.

"Yes, I believe I can," she says, mimicking her grandmother's accent, putting lifts and flares into her words that she's never used before while speaking English.

In her own ears, it's a poor imitation to the beautiful cursive of her grandmother's speech, but the attempt seems to satisfy Mr. Adams nonetheless.

"Very good," he says staunchly. "The country folk won't know the difference between Spanish and Italian anyhow. You sound exotic. You can pass."

_Pass._

The word stings Santana more than it ought to, but after two weeks spent at that god-awful boarding house in the Tenderloin district, it gets at something deep inside of Santana that she never knew existed before her father died.

Thinking of her father still rattles Santana; on the one hand, she feels as grateful for and attached to him as she always has, and particularly now that she knows how he protected her while he was alive, but, on the other hand, she feels a niggling resentment toward him for not warning her about her situation before he died—for not telling her that a world existed beyond the quiet garden walls at the bachelor cottage.

And she misses him, deep, like a wound-ache.

Since his passing, Santana has learned a whole slough of new words, and quickly: _bastard_, _mulatta_, _nigger_, _boot-lip_, _can't pass._

They've rung in her ears ever since his funeral. They're part of the rules that Santana can never seem to get right.

"Now," says Mr. Adams, ignoring Santana's flinching, if he sees it. He turns back to Puck. "You did say she's skilled in the arts of chiromancy and cartomancy, did you not, Mr. Puckerman?"

"Yes, sir," Puck says quickly.

A loud scoffing sound cuts through the conversation, and, for the first time in a full minute, Santana remembers the presence of the squat man, who now takes his turn to speak.

"Our last fortuneteller was a damn waste of space," the squat man says meanly, his face blotchy and bloated like a rotting tomato. "She couldn't tell her left from right, let alone a fortune!"

Mr. Adams smirks. "Well, Mr. Puckerman assures me that his wife is genuinely gifted, Ken. We might as well audition her."

Santana's heart clenches in her chest. Puck flashes Santana a look over Mr. Adams' shoulder.

_Don't ruin it._

"Have you cards on hand?" Mr. Adams asks Santana, his smirking mouth lifted at the corner.

Santana shakes her head quickly no.

"So a palm reading, then?" Mr. Adams suggests, holding out his hand like a gift for Santana.

For a second, Santana hesitates, torn between the imperative to take Mr. Adams' hand and her every instinct telling her that crossing that boundary would be a bad idea. It's part of the rules that people like Santana oughtn't to touch people like Mr. Adams, but it's also a rule that when a person like Mr. Adams gives instructions, a person like Santana ought to obey them, and fast. Santana feels a burn deep inside her, her whole body seized with nerves.

Everyone waits for her, staring.

_Move_, Santana commands herself. _Move_, and she jolts, her hands reaching out an instant before her thoughts catch up with them in accepting Mr. Adams' proffered palm.

Santana gulps.

She's never read anyone's palm before in her life.

Holding Mr. Adams' hand in her own, Santana can't imagine what there is to read in a palm at all. Mr. Adams' palm is flat and pale, hairless and uninteresting in its topography. Lines trail across it like rivers sketched in pencil on a map, and, though Santana knows that reading palms somehow involves deriving meanings from those lines, she hasn't any ideas as to what those meanings should be.

Puck told Santana to tell Mr. Adams what he wants to hear—the trouble is, Santana doesn't know Mr. Adams well enough to know what that might be.

All Puck has mentioned to Santana about Mr. Adams is that he's the man who owns the circus and that he footed the bill for Puck's surgery after Puck injured himself on the job. From the foolish, enthralled schoolboy way Puck talks about Mr. Adams, Santana can tell that Puck holds Mr. Adams in high esteem and seems to want to please him.

Santana supposes she can start with that.

"You are a man greatly respected," Santana says in her false accent. "In times of trouble, your employees look to you for... help."

Santana raises her eyes from Mr. Adams' palm to his face, checking his reaction. She finds him wearing his same amused smirk, impassive. Santana doesn't know how to interpret his expression. Does Mr. Adams like what she's saying at all?

The thing is that Mr. Adams' smirk isn't precisely like Puck's—it isn't devilish or rude. It also isn't his full smile; Santana knows that from when Mr. Adams laughed at Puck earlier and his whole face turned up into a wide, jocund grin, his eyes nearly disappearing behind his lifted cheeks. If anything, Mr. Adams' smirk seems to conceal his real smile, like he has to hold his mirth in so that the people below him will regard him seriously. Santana has the impression that if he felt free to do so, Mr. Adams might laugh more freely.

So Santana hazards a guess.

"You have a hidden passion," she says slowly, careful lest she upset Mr. Adams. When he says nothing, she continues. "You have great responsibilities, and you must withhold the better part of yourself from your associates." She considers for a moment, wondering what might constrain Mr. Adams to keep to himself in check, as she must suppose he does. "You have had experiences when people have... misunderstood you. You seek not to repeat those experiences."

"That's enough," Mr. Adams says suddenly, retrieving his hand away from Santana's grip. Santana starts, terrified that she's said something wrong. She looks up from Mr. Adams' palm and finds his smirk gone, replaced by a narrow, unreadable expression.

"Sir?" Puck asks, sounding just as nervous as Santana feels.

"She's gifted," Mr. Adams says. "Quite the astute people reader—though she'll have to learn to look more at her patrons' palms and less at their eyes if she wants to convince them of her prowess. Also, she must say _you will_ more. Speak of the present as though it's the future." He gives Santana a reproving nod.

"So she's hired?" Puck infers.

Mr. Adams nods, the smirk returning to his face. "Yes," he says. "Her complexion doesn't quite match those of the rest of you gypsies, but she is beautiful, in her own way, and sufficiently talented. I think she'll have quite the act." He walks back over to the table, his back turned to Puck and Santana. "We'll call her _Madame Rossetti_ and pitch her as a gypsy from Rome. I'll have the boys start work on her marquee tonight. They'll have it ready for her by the time we reach Worthington. Now, Noah tells me you can read cards," Mr. Adams says directly to Santana. "Is that so?"

For a second, Santana considers lying. After all, she already impressed Mr. Adams enough as a palm reader, so why must she impress him with cards, as well? She could tell Mr. Adams that Puck is mistaken, and she doesn't know the first thing about tarot at all.

It would be safer that way.

"Can't have a fortuneteller who don't read cards, ladybird," Puck mutters over Mr. Adams' shoulder, staring at Santana like he's trying to will her to say the right answer with his eyes.

"I—I can," Santana stammers.

"Good," says Mr. Adams, smiling his full smile again, his eyes sinking behind his cheeks. "Well, we'll see what we can't do about finding you a deck, then. Ken!"

Ken jolts from where he had just retaken his seat on the couch, standing to attention. "Sir?"

"Take our new fortuneteller to see a lady about a costume, why don't you? I think that Mrs. Schuester is busy fitting the equestrienne outfit today, if I'm not mistaken, so perhaps deliver Santana to Ma Jones, if you can?"

"Yes, sir."

Ken motions for Santana to follow him out of the tent. She sends a pleading look to Puck, uneasy at the thought of separating from him when he's the only person in the camp whom she knows beyond just a name, but he doesn't seem to notice her concern. Instead, Puck flashes his devilish smirk at Santana, retrieving their luggage from the ground.

"I'll find you later, ladybird," he mutters, patting Santana on the shoulder as he exits the tent.

Ken nods, impatient, and motions again for Santana to follow.

They don't make it two steps before Mr. Adams calls after them.

"Mrs. Puckerman?" he booms. "Welcome to the circus!"

* * *

><p>Stepping from the darkness of the tent to the bright sheen of outside temporarily blinds Santana. When her eyes adjust, she finds Ken sneering at her.<p>

"You're lucky it's a down day, missus," he says sourly, "or otherwise I probably wouldn't have time to do this for you."

"Down day?" Santana repeats, not sure what Ken means.

"Down day," Ken affirms.

He sounds impatient, like Santana is somehow deficient for not knowing the term. Santana feels something curdle in her stomach. She finds herself disliking Ken more and more by the minute.

"Most Saturdays, we don't put on shows. We use the time to catch up on work around the camp. You are accustomed to work, aren't you? Better be, because I don't have time for shiftlessness. I run this place tight enough that you could bounce a dime off it, you hear? I don't care how pretty Noah Puckerman thinks you are. You're still on the line with me, and if it turns out I don't like you, I'll say some words to Mr. Adams and Mr. Fabray and have you red-lighted faster than you can blink, got it, gypsy?"

Santana has no idea what _red-lighting_ is, but the way Ken spits the term from his mouth like it's dirty makes her think it's probably unpleasant, whatever the case may be. Santana doesn't want to upset anyone on her first day, so she just nods, and quickly.

Ken eyes her up and down again; he seems to appreciate her silence and deference. "Okay," he says thickly. "Now let's see if we can't find someone to get you to Ma Jones. She'll fix you up well enough."

Without waiting for Santana to reply, Ken turns his back on her and starts walking away through the tents. Santana scurries after him, not sure if Ken has taken an especial dislike to her or if he simply dislikes everyone he meets equally.

For a man who waddles to make his way, Ken certainly moves fast; Santana has to jog to keep up with him as he navigates through the labyrinth of tents and wagons, towards some unknown destination.

Turning between two smaller tents, Santana spots her first circus folk: a tall, lean man and a shorter woman.

China people.

They stare at Santana like they've never seen anything like her before, which is perhaps funny, given that she's never seen anything like them at all, either, outside of in books.

Their eyes look deep and almost black, and Santana can't read them. She wonders about the rules for someone like her looking at people like them and them looking back. The man extends a battered stainless steel coffee pot to the woman, pouring coffee into the little aluminum cup she holds, but neither one of them ever looks away from Santana.

Even though they wear street clothes—the same kind of street clothes one might see on the sidewalks of New York—they still seem strange to Santana, like they came from the moon instead of just the other side of the world. All the same, Santana can't help but feel that she's the strange character in this scene, not them.

Ken leads Santana past the duo quickly and without introduction; she slings a glance over her shoulder once she and Ken pass the circus folk, more questions in her mind than she can count, and sees the man muttering something to the woman, staring after her.

After just a few more turns and quick paces, Ken comes to a halt outside a tent even bigger than the one inside which Santana met Mr. Adams, situated just beyond the big top. A wooden sign in block letters hangs over the lintel of the tent door: LADIES' DRESSING TENT.

Ken clears his throat.

"You'll have to go inside on your own... from here... now," he says awkwardly, as if it's indelicate for him to mention that he, as a man, shouldn't just wander into a ladies' dressing tent—like even referencing the rules aloud is somehow bad.

"All right," Santana says, awaiting further instruction.

Ken glances up at the sign over the door again and actually blushes. Suddenly, Santana finds herself disliking him less than she did before; he's blustery but obviously a bumbler, too. Her father would have called Ken an idiot, if he had ever met him.

(Santana would have had to agree.)

"Just find someone and ask for Ma Jones," Ken says. "Tell her that Mr. Adams hired you as a fortuneteller and that she needs to fit you up as a gypsy."

Ken pauses and Santana thinks he might say more, but he doesn't. He doffs his bowler and wrings it between his hands, beady eyes shifting nervously between Santana and the door. He opens his mouth and then closes it.

"Should I...?" Santana prods, leaning towards the door, and Ken just nods. Santana turns away from Ken, eager to acquit herself of his company. She parts the canvas flaps on the tent door and lets herself inside without another word.

* * *

><p>Santana finds that the dressing tent feels less stuffy inside than Mr. Adams' sitting room did, maybe because it sits under the long shadow of the big top instead of directly in the sunlight or maybe because it's bigger and more spread out than Mr. Adams' tent inside in general.<p>

(She can't help but feel a little bit like one of Mr. Poe's protagonists, poking through doors without first knowing what's behind them.)

Heaps of clothing and various trunks clutter the inside of the tent, and framed fabric partitions divide the room into makeshift changing stalls. A few upright mirrors stand haphazardly in open spaces, casting weird reflections off each other here and there.

There are definitely more circus people in this tent than Santana has seen yet today in one place. A whole troupe of young, skinny girls about Santana's age chatter in a queue leading up to two flustered-looking older women.

About half of the young girls are dressed up in pretty red riding habits with black collars, veiled top hats, and white gloves, while the other half of them are dressed in nothing but their underclothes, bloomers and corsets on display for everyone to see.

Of the two older women, one of them is also clothed in a riding habit, and the other dons a work apron and sits on a stool, taking quick, furious measurements of the girls approaching her in the queue.

Several young seamstresses surround them, calling over the girls who finish in the line and hemming their costumes according the markings that the older woman has left on their skirts.

At first glance, the scene appears chaotic, but as Santana draws closer, she realizes that it's actually a well-organized system, with all the women moving like cogs in a clock.

As Santana approaches the scene to within a few paces, Santana overhears the older woman in the riding habit barking instructions to the girls in the queue in a language that Santana doesn't understand. The woman's words sound harsh, and she waves a riding switch in the direction of the girls, many of whom shy away from her, frightened like misbehaving students in the face of a disciplinarian teacher.

The woman in the apron likewise shouts instructions over the hubbub, though in her case to the younger seamstresses stationed to the side of her. She calls out measurements and criticizes their stitching—in English, so Santana understands.

She seems to be at the head of this enterprise.

Santana gathers her courage and sidles up behind the woman. "Excuse me, ma'am?" she says, struggling to make her voice heard over all the chatter. "Ma Jones? Mr. Adams sent me to see you."

The woman looks up from her work, affronted, and glares at Santana with such intensity that Santana nearly stumbles backwards.

"Excuse me?" she repeats, venom in her words that Santana hardly expected to hear. "Do I look like Ma Jones to you? What are you thinking?"

All Santana can think is that the woman has the most unsettling eyes she's ever seen. Santana has never met a mad person before, but she's read about them from Mr. Doyle, and she can't help but suppose that if anyone ever had mad eyes, it would have to be this woman, who doesn't seem to know how to blink. Santana can't help but feel like the woman hates her already.

The woman is small, fair, and, save for her unsettling eyes, pretty. She has delicate features and wears her honey-colored hair up in a bun. She appears well-groomed and even made up a bit. Santana can only suppose that whatever Ma Jones looks like, she doesn't look anything like this woman does.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Santana stutters. "Ken just told me to find Ma Jones so I could get my costume. I thought that maybe—"

"Well, I'm not Ma," the woman says huffily, as though she can't think of anything more offensive than Santana's honest mistake. "I'm Theresa Schuester, the ringmaster's wife and the head seamstress around here. Normally, I would be the one to fit you for your costume, but as you can see, I'm very busy at the moment, so Ma will have to deal with you."

Though Mrs. Schuester has a sweet voice and her words come out candied, there's also an undeniable meanness to what she says, much more so than if she were to actually shout. In the past two weeks, Santana has had a lot of people talk down to her, but she still isn't used to the way it stings her whenever people do so.

She isn't an idiot.

In this case, she just didn't know any better than to think that Mrs. Schuester was Ma Jones.

Until recently, Santana had never really had anyone hate her before, but now it seems like each new person she meets hates her a little bit more than the last person did. She suddenly feels very lonely for Puck, not because she's fond of him but because he likes her—or parts of her, at least.

"Do you happen to know where I could find Ma Jones?" Santana asks, hoping that Mrs. Schuester will send her on her way without any further meanness.

Mrs. Schuester scoffs.

"Well, I can't very well get up from my work, now can I?" she scoffs, turning her attention back to the trembling girl in a riding habit waiting in front of her.

She eyeballs the girl's skirt—a tad too long—and draws a quick, harsh line across it. The older woman standing at her side holding the switch barks something at the trembling girl, and the girl scurries over to one of the younger seamstresses, already waiting for her, needle and scissors in hand.

Mrs. Schuester shakes her head, annoyed. "I still have twelve more measurements to take before supper, so you'll just have to wait until I'm through before I can take you to Ma," she says.

Before Santana can make any sort of reply, the tent flaps part and someone else enters the room. Santana turns to see a heavyset young woman with skin darker than her own stride into the room, wearing a scowl.

The young woman has a face that's round and soft like ripened fruit, with pretty, dark eyes and pouting lips, her hair woven into fishtail plaits atop her head. She moves with the determination of a locomotive and the self-possessed indignation of a gentleman war marshal, carrying her skirts hitched up to her ankle in one hand and a wooden cooking spoon, brandished like a rapier, in the other.

Santana has never seen anyone so magnificent in her life.

"Mrs. Schuester!" the young woman booms, by way of greeting. "How am I supposed to get supper cooked with half my kitchen in here, sewing stitches for you? Are y'all crazy?"

Everyone in the tent stops, cowering. Even the woman with the switch and Mrs. Schuester recoil.

"Ma," Mrs. Schuester stumbles, her eyes rabbit-wide and frightened. "I was just looking for you—"

"Like the devil you were, Mrs. Schuester!" Ma says, cutting her off sharply, waving the wooden spoon in her face. "You've been hiding from me all day because you knew I'd have something to say to you about taking all my girls!"

The young seamstresses flanking Mrs. Schuester shudder and divert their eyes, and the girls in the queue huddle together, hanging as far aback from Ma as they can.

As for herself, Santana doesn't know what to do or how to act. Santana partly wants to laugh because she takes certain delight in seeing how Ma Jones frightens Mrs. Schuester, but Santana also doesn't want to do anything to get on Ma's bad side, seeing as how everyone seems so submissive to her.

Santana finds that she wants Ma Jones to like her very much, though she can't precisely say why—perhaps because no one else has liked Santana yet today or perhaps because Ma Jones secretly impresses Santana very much.

(Maybe because Santana realizes that Ma Jones is like her, almost.)

"You know as well as I do that I have to get these costumes fitted before we hit Worthington," Mrs. Schuester pouts.

"And you know as well as I do that if I don't get some help peeling the potatoes and kneading the bread dough, ain't nobody gonna eat tonight, including your skinny self!" Ma retorts, folding her arms over her chest.

For a second, Mrs. Schuester is speechless; she seems very small, seated on her stool with Ma Jones towering over her. Her mouth hangs open and she looks away from Ma, at first aimlessly, but then fixing on Santana. An idea seems to catch hold of her.

"Well," says Mrs. Schuester, "before you can do anything else, Mr. Adams has an urgent task for you: you need to help—," she pauses, realizing that she never actually asked Santana's name.

"Santana," Santana supplies her.

"—_Santana_ find a costume. Mr. Adams just hired her as a—"

"Gypsy fortuneteller."

"—as a gypsy fortuneteller and she needs an outfit before we hit Worthington."

Mrs. Schuester smirks at Ma Jones, satisfied with the little bit of power she just regained over her. For her part, Ma Jones looks thoroughly annoyed. Ma glances over at Santana.

"Mr. Adams hired you?" she repeats, incredulous. She looks Santana up and down, seeming thoroughly unimpressed. For the second time today, Santana wonders what it is that people want to see when they scrutinize her.

"Yes," Santana answers, hesitating as to whether to call Ma Jones _ma'am_ or not; the rules blur a little on this one.

Ma heaves a sigh, clearly burdened. "All right," she says, looking at Santana like she's a dirty room that needs cleaning before the company arrives for parlor games. "Come with me."

Ma lowers her wooden spoon and leads Santana away from Mrs. Schuester, the woman with the switch, and the queue of girls in riding habits, past the young seamstresses and through a maze of room partitions to a haphazardly arranged pile of traveling trunks, all in various states of unlock.

She looks at Santana, sizing her up.

"A gypsy?" she repeats.

"Yes... ma'am," Santana says, not sure on the decorum.

Ma makes a scoffing noise but doesn't say anything to Santana. Instead, she starts rooting around in the traveling trunks, opening them and pulling up harlequin fabrics and leather belts, examining each unearthed clothing article before quickly moving on, clearly dissatisfied with her findings.

As Ma searches, Santana stands behind her, not sure what to do with herself or how to help with Ma's work, feeling just as out of place as she has all day. Ma Jones sinks to her knees and mutters to herself. Eventually, she pulls out a white blouse with airy sleeves. She seems to deem it appropriate and tosses it over her arm to hold onto for later.

"Where did we put that skirt?" she mumbles to herself, eyeing the assembled trunks with her bottom lip between her teeth.

Santana glances at the unchecked trunks—about half a dozen in all—and winces, wondering if they'll have to check all of them for the missing skirt. Some of the trunks have labels on the side of them: MEDIEVAL, WESTERN, CLOWN PROPS & MISC., TIGER COLLARS ETC., FRONTIER, EUROPEAN.

"How about that one?" she offers, gesturing to the EUROPEAN trunk.

Ma Jones looks between Santana and the trunk, annoyed with Santana for suggesting that she search it and annoyed with the trunk simply for existing.

"Listen," she says roughly, her gaze falling on Santana. "You best swallow any pertness you brought with you from wherever you come from, girl, you hear? You may be yeller to them, but to me you're just another mouth to feed and something distracting me from the job I have to do. You ain't better than no one. Once I get you this costume, you better stay well clear of me, miss, because I don't have time for nonsense. Everyone around here is the same to me, so just save it because I don't want to hear nothing about it. Understand me?"

Santana doesn't understand even a little bit—she doesn't understand why everyone in the circus seems so unfriendly or what about her causes everyone she meets to immediately dislike her; she certainly doesn't understand all the invisible rules in the world, and she doesn't understand a word Ma Jones just said. She stares at Ma, dumbstruck. Unable to think of anything safe to say, she only nods her head.

So much for getting Ma Jones to like her.

Despite the lecture she gave to Santana, Ma slides over to the EUROPEAN trunk and props it open, taking Santana's suggestion, peeling through the trunk's contents until she seems to find something she likes. She nods approvingly.

"You're gonna have to take this in," she says, producing a long, layered skirt in multiple colors, one tier in blue, another in berry red, another pink, another brown, another slated gray, and all of them flowered, with little mosaic designs.

Santana's eyes bug. She can only imagine what her grandmother would say about her wearing such a bombastic pattern. Ma Jones hands the skirt over to Santana; it rests heavy in her arms. The skirt probably has about fifteen yards of fabric to it, all wound in under layers and little fringes. Ma Jones stoops over the trunk and comes up carrying several bright, silken scarves, colored in lively reds and purples, as well as some jangling bangles, a leather belt, and a bracelet made from tin coins, passing them over to Santana in turn.

"You know how to sew, don't you?" Ma says.

Again, Santana nods, overwhelmed by her new costume. Do they really want her to wear such a garish outfit when she performs in the circus?

"Good," Ma says curtly. "Now let's go find you a sewing kit and get me back my kitchen girls so I can send you along and make all y'all fools some supper."

* * *

><p>The sewing kit Ma provides for Santana contains nothing more than a spool of black thread, some scissors, a handful of pins, and a single steel needle.<p>

Ma turns the supplies over to Santana, setting them atop Santana's costume in her arms, and then sends Santana out of the dressing tent, ordering Santana to "stay out of the way until supper."

Of course, at this point, Santana doesn't know what would constitute being "in the way;" she has no idea where she is and isn't allowed to be around the camp, and she can't work up the nerve to ask any of the various circus folk milling about outside the dressing tent for instruction.

Whatever Santana expected from the circus, this certainly isn't it.

After earning herself a few glares for standing in the middle of a walking space, Santana sets off to find a quiet place to sew, darting in-between various persons—all of them in plainclothes—as she makes her way away from the dressing tent.

Not knowing where else to go, she wanders back in the direction of the wagon that first brought her into camp, using the flag waving over the big top as a landmark by which to navigate.

Without Puck or Ken leading her, Santana takes her time walking, imbibing all the sights she didn't get the chance to observe on her first jaunt through camp.

She sees empty chaw tins and colored beads lost in the grass and loose boards and buckets propped alongside various structures. She passes all manner of people, ranging from two small towheaded children laughing at a grasshopper trapped, springing, between their dancing footfalls to men hauling unwieldy, hay-stacked wheelbarrows across the camp.

Her gaze catches anything that moves, and everything seems interesting to her, from the loud snuffing noises she hears in the distance to the way the sun in Nebraska seems to hang in the center of the sky, even though it's long past noon now.

As she walks past them, Santana brushes her fingers against the canvas on some of the tents, familiarizing herself to their touch. She notices that some of the tents have numbers or initials painted on the sides. Without a context, the markings mean less to Santana than would Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Now that she finds herself at the heart of the circus, Santana realizes that the camp stands divided into two main sections, one comprised of smaller tents—where Santana presumes that the circus folk make their accommodations at night—and the other of the big top and sideshow tents, with Mr. Adams' tent and the dressing tents situated roughly in-between.

The billboards block the residential side of the camp from the business side, though Santana doesn't know if that's to protect the privacy of the performers or to prevent the public from interacting with them outside of shows.

Santana passes her first circus freaks as she walks: two ladies, both enormous, one taller than most of the men Santana has ever met in her life, with broad shoulders and arms like tree branches, and the other round like a globe, with soft, white skin, fair under the sun. Santana tries not to stare at the women, even though they interest her, but feels somehow like magnets attract her eyes to them; she can't look away, no matter how much she tries to.

For their parts, the women don't seem to notice Santana at all; they walk past her like she's invisible, so close that Santana catches a snatch of their conversation.

"—but I've got a brother who depends on it," says the tall lady in a deep, almost mannish voice.

"Well, if the investor comes though—," the round lady answers, her voice decidedly younger and more girlish.

Briefly, Santana feels like she's nothing but a pair of eyes in this world, watching everything speed past her as she stalls. She's talked so little today, and nothing she's said has really mattered. She sees everything, though. She sees more than she can even process.

It takes a second for Santana to move again even after the two ladies pass by her.

Eventually, Santana finds herself back at the wagon. Standing on tiptoe, Santana arranges her new costume and sewing kit on the wagon bench before using the jockey box to boost herself up onto the seat alongside them.

Now that she doesn't have to carry her costume anymore, Santana can actually examine it. Running her hands over the skirt, she discovers that it comes with several thin leaves of petticoats underneath. Will it be heavy to wear, Santana wonders? She hopes not, considering that she may have to participate in Puck's gypsy fire dance act with it on.

Continuing her exploration, Santana finds that the blouse Ma gave her has no shoulders in it—that is, that it's like the sort of shirt that a saloon girl might wear. Santana cringes to imagine what her grandmother would say if she knew that Santana had even considered wearing such an immodest garment. Unfortunately, Santana knows that she hasn't really a choice but to wear it. Ma Jones gave it to her, so it will have to do.

Like Puck says, the circus is all about theatricality.

Though Santana has never much enjoyed sewing—too tedious and repetitive—her grandmother made sure that she was well-accomplished in the skill, to the point where, after years of practice, Santana possesses a clever hand and a tight stitch.

One thing Santana does not possess, however, is the ability to make precise measurements without a measuring tape.

Since Ma Jones didn't give Santana a measuring tape, Santana finds herself eyeballing the alterations—a task made nearly impossible being that Santana can't even see the skirt on a model and instead must eyeball it lying flat on a bench.

She holds the skirt up to her own hips and notes that it is several inches too long for her, but, beyond that, there's not much she can do.

Of course, Santana's grandmother would balk at so much guesswork, but, then again, Santana's grandmother isn't here, is she?

Santana sets about pinning the hem of the skirt, hoping that she won't ruin her very first circus costume by the time she finishes taking it in.

Hemming the skirt is a long, tedious job, made worse by the hunger gnawing at Santana's stomach. Santana hasn't eaten since she had supper at a boarding house in Omaha last night, and between the relentless heat and the fact that she didn't take either breakfast or lunch today, she feels the fearful kind of dizzy, all but punch drunk beneath the afternoon sun.

Ma Jones mentioned making supper, but Santana has no idea when she'll next see a meal. Her hand wobbles, and she has to keep teasing out her stitches and making them again because her lines don't look straight and her threads won't stay taut. She can't keep track of time without a watch or clock to go by, but she does notice the sun finally moving from the center of the sky towards the distant horizon, shifting to hit the left side of her face. She squints against it, woozy and annoyed.

She almost starts crying when she nicks herself with the right-handed scissors that she can hardly use because she's left-handed.

For the most part, very few people pass by Santana seated on the wagon, but then a half-dozen men, all of them darker than Santana, saunter over late in the day, bags of tools hung over their shoulders. They sling hard looks at Santana, like she hasn't the right to perch atop the wagon bench.

Too tired to move and beyond annoyed with all her hard luck, Santana actually dares to glare at these would-be critics, as if challenging them to bodily remove her from the place if she really oughtn't to sit where she is.

(On another day, Santana might pay more attention to the rules, but as the afternoon fades, she could hardly care less. The rules gray in this situation anyhow.)

For a while, the sun gets brighter, but then the day starts to cool. A shadow from a nearby tent stretches partially over the wagon, but offers little relief to Santana, her skin tightening under the blistering sun. Santana feels parched and on the edge of collapse. Her thoughts start to swim in themselves like pollywogs in a mud puddle. Her hand shakes as she sets the last few stitches on the hem, stomach hurt with hunger.

A voice jolts her out of her near-delirium.

"Hey, ladybird! There you are!" Puck calls, wandering across the grass, something Santana can't very much see concealed between his hands, devilish smirk on his face. "I brought you a present, direct from Mr. Adams to you," he says cheerfully, revealing the mystery object: a deck of cards.

Tarot cards.

Suddenly, Santana feels ill from more than just the heat and hunger. Puck bounds up onto the wagon bench beside Santana, careful not to sit on her skirt, and passes the tarot deck over to her for examination.

It's a French deck, beautifully illustrated in lush greens, happy golds, blood-deep reds, and jeweled blues, the characters on the card faces all expressive and handsome. Santana flips to the first card, the Fool, dressed in flowing primary motley, and the next in line, the Lovers, naked and clasping hands under a beatific angel god. The deck is all out of order.

"Will these work well enough?" Puck asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Santana feels a pang of dread. "Sure," she says, worried that they'll work too well.

Puck glances down at the skirt spread over Santana's lap. "S'pretty," he says lamely, running his fingers over the fabric, like he just can't help but touch the design.

(Sometimes Puck reminds Santana very much of a little boy. She finds she likes him best in the moments when he does.)

Santana scoffs. "It's not pretty now that I've ruined the hemline."

"Well, why'd you go and do that?" Puck asks seriously, pulling a face. Without waiting for an answer, he taps Santana on the thigh and rises from the bench. "Come on, ladybird," he says. "Let's get your sewing kit back where it belongs and clean up before supper. What do you say?"

Santana doesn't say anything; instead, she commences stuffing her borrowed sewing supplies back into the little beaded sack from which they came and folding up her new costume, eager to get supper as soon as possible. Puck offers his arm as a rack for the clothes and Santana obliges him, draping her new skirt, blouse, and scarves over the crook of his elbow.

Santana knows that her sewing job looks atrocious—her grandmother would have smacked her ear for putting in such sloppy stitches, were she around to see them—but Santana doesn't care to fix it, and especially not now as the light has grown dimmer overhead and everything feels so long and spent.

Just like he did earlier in the afternoon, Puck hops from the wagon to the earth and then offers a hand to Santana to help her down, as well. She sets a palm on Puck's shoulder and leaps, landing with an _oof_ on the grass. Puck carries Santana's costume while she carries her little bag. He leads her back towards the ladies' dressing tent.

In the hours since Santana last walked the camp, the shadows between the tents have grown tall and now boast deep, cool umbrae. Puck links his and Santana's free arms together as they walk, and, for once, Santana doesn't really mind Puck's boldness, enjoying the way he guides her along, using his strength more than hers, like a tugboat pulling a ship into harbor.

They make it about halfway back to the dressing tent when a loud, rude sound trumpets through the air, startling Santana and stopping her in her tracks. Her eyes go wide and her heart leaps in her chest, quick as a rabbit sprinting for cover through a field.

"What was that?" she jolts.

Puck laughs in response. "That's the big bull elephant," he says matter-of-factly, as though it's usual to hear elephant noises on the plains of Nebraska or anywhere outside Africa or India, really. "He's just wondering where his supper is, same as us."

Maybe it's just because she already feels woozy, but Santana finds it impossible to even nod in response. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears. She must look stricken.

"You okay, ladybird?" Puck asks, stifling his laughter.

Santana gulps down her fear. "Yes," she says breathlessly. "It just spooked me, that's all. Wasn't expecting it."

"Well, that's your trouble, right there," Puck says knowingly.

After returning the sewing kit to one of the young seamstresses in the dressing tent, Santana follows Puck to the residential side of camp, where he eventually stops outside one of the small canvas structures.

"Home sweet home," he says with his idiot grin, lifting his arms to show Santana, as if the view will impress her.

From the outside, the tent appears to be maybe just a bit taller than Puck himself in height and about eight feet in length, four feet in width. It's a wall tent with a pitched roof and four corners, made from canvas on the top and sod cloth on the sides, white all over, with stakes tethering it to the earth.

Puck wastes no time in showing Santana inside, crouching as he slips though the door flaps, Santana following after him.

Without waiting for Santana to even get her bearings, Puck asks, "What do you think, ladybird?" as proud as if he had just given her the grand tour of a magnificent European castle.

Honestly, Santana doesn't know that there's anything much to think about the inside of this tent. It's small and hot inside, the canvas at the top of the tent still saturated with afternoon sun heat, even in the fading daylight.

A low, short cot—nothing more than a hammock of fabric stretched over the bare, wooden frame of a bed—lines one wall. An oak stool sits in one corner beside Puck's rucksack, a rolled bed mat, and Santana's valise and hat. A stainless steel travel toilette set, complete with basin, perches atop an empty, overturned vegetable crate beside the cot, near the tent door.

A half-finished carving of an eagle's head lies alongside a whittling knife atop the stool, the eagle's screaming beak and glaring eyeball emerging from a clumsy, unfinished hickory handle. Chips and castoff fleck in the grass around the legs of the stool.

Aside from the carving, nothing inside the tent distinguishes it as Puck's domicile, in particular.

A couple of lazy daddy longlegs meander along the tent walls and ceiling.

Puck drapes Santana's costume over the cot, as if setting a sleeping princess to rest.

For some reason, it hadn't occurred to Santana that she and Puck would be sharing a tent until now. It makes sense, she supposes, considering that Mr. Adams believes that they're married.

But the thing is that they're not actually married.

(Santana's grandmother would start praying to every saint in the _Letania de los Santos_ if she knew about Puck's and Santana's sleeping arrangements.)

(There's only one cot.)

"It's nice," Santana says shortly, both because she hasn't anything else to say and because she feels incredibly tired and hungry, to the point where she can scarcely speak.

Puck mistakes Santana's stiltedness for impatience, oblivious to her concern about sharing a tent with him. "We can go head over to the mess pit, if you like," he offers lamely. "They haven't rung the bell yet, but maybe we could help Ma stir the pot until the meal's fixed."

Santana pinches at the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache brewing there and at the sides of her skull.

"You okay, ladybird?" Puck asks warily.

Until today, Santana had never spent so much time outdoors before in her life. She feels hotter, more exhausted, and dirtier than she can ever remember feeling all at one time. It seems like everyone except Puck hates her around this place and she can't for the life of her figure out wherefore. She isn't certain if she would prefer to sleep or to eat, but she knows if she doesn't do one or the other of those activities soon, she'll likely keel over on the spot.

"It's just been a long day," Santana replies honestly.

(A long week, few weeks, month, year, really.)

Puck offers her a sympathetic pout. "You'll feel better once you eat something," he promises.

* * *

><p>As Puck and Santana walk towards the mess pit, Puck takes the opportunity to fill Santana in about the who's who of the circus.<p>

"'Course you know Mr. Adams now," he says, beaming like a proud son namedropping a famous father. "And Ken—he's the head foreman around here, in charge of all the supes. He talks a big fuss, but he ain't spit, hardly. He's scared of the elephants and wouldn't know how to make conversation with a pretty lady if his job depended on it."

Santana laughs, pleased that someone else seems to share her feelings concerning Ken. "He turned brick red when he dropped me off at the ladies' dressing tent," she notes.

Puck smirks and nods, tipping the brim of his hat as he and Santana pass by the same Chinese man and woman Santana saw earlier in the day.

"Who are they?" Santana whispers, as soon as she and Puck get out of earshot from them.

"Them?" Puck says. "That's the Flying Dragon Changs of Peking." He lowers his voice and brings his mouth close to Santana's ear, so he can speak to her without anyone overhearing. "Nobody knows whether they're brother and sister or man and wife. They don't speak a lick of English and mostly just keep to themselves."

Santana can't help but chuckle at how serious Puck sounds.

Puck straightens up. "Now you met Ma Jones, right? Because she's the most important person in this whole damn camp."

"She is?"

Puck nods solemnly, "Yeah. She's more important than Willy the Ringmaster, ol' Kenny Boy, and all the supes combined."

"Why?"

"'Cause she's in charge of the grub," Puck deadpans and Santana smiles.

"Well, that certainly qualifies her in my book," she agrees.

* * *

><p>Puck and Santana are not the only members of the circus company who show up early to supper; a large group of people of all sizes and ages mill about the mess pit—which is really just an open space in the middle of a ring of tents and not a pit at all.<p>

At the heart of the space sits a smoking fire with several deep-bellied Dutch ovens in it. Multiple low benches and stools surround the hearth. A few long tables flank what Santana supposes must be the mess wagon, and a blue fabric canopy hangs over the longest of the tables, suspended on upright poles.

Six or seven girls, most of them darker than Santana—some of them the same seamstresses Santana observed earlier in the day—scurry around the fire pit and table, stirring various dishes, kneading dough, and peeling root vegetables with paring knives.

In the center of them stands Ma Jones, her hands on her hips, directing her kitchen staff as a general would field troops, sending this girl running here and that girl running there, yelling at the little children trying to stick their fingers into uncovered pots to back away from the table and chastising the grown men gathered around the hearth for lousing about without offering their help to anyone.

She seems exasperated but also strangely at peace—like she's right where she belongs in the center of the whirlwind.

The sun has begun to set in earnest at the horizon now, casting a fervent orange glow over the plains. Somehow, the gloaming has a muting effect upon the chaos of the mess pit, making its noise and movement seem softer than they are.

For a second, Santana's breath catches; something about seeing so many people doing so many things in one place returns that impossibly lonely feeling to her. In that instant, it seems clear to her that she has no part in the circus clockwork—that even surrounded by crowds, she is entirely, unspeakably alone.

"Puck!" a voice calls through the hubbub.

Santana turns to see a young man about her and Puck's age emerge from out of the crowd, waving his hand and grinning. The young man has yellow hair and a very wide, pink mouth, turned up into a crooked smile. He's taller than Puck and solidly built, with broad shoulders and a cheerful bearing. Another boy stumbles up behind him, dark haired and even taller still. This boy has a shuffling gait and wears a stunned expression on his face. Both of the boys are light-skinned, more so than Puck.

"Sam! Finn!" Puck crows, drawing them each into a rough, manhandling embrace in turn. He smacks Sam—the yellow-haired boy—hard on the back.

"You're back!" Finn says, smiling, punching Puck on the arm in a weird imitation of Puck's violence with Sam. His punch seems clumsy and his stunned expression permanent.

"Sure am," Puck says slyly, smirking his devil smirk. "And no worse for the wear, either! I'm ready to win back my money from you chuckleheads." He points a warning finger between the two of them. "Euchre on the train tomorrow?"

"Sure thing," Sam agrees.

"Good," Puck says firmly, doffing his hat, folding it, and stuffing it under his belt at his waist.

"Now who's this?" Sam says, taking note of Santana for the first time. He smiles at her kindly.

"I was getting to that," Puck says. "Don't rush me." He adjusts his belt over the hat, tongue between his teeth and then straightens up. "Sam, Finn, I'd like you to meet my wife, Santana."

"Your wife?" Finn splutters.

"Yeah, moron," Puck says meanly, punching Finn in the arm much harder than Finn punched him just a second ago. Finn flinches, pained. "My wife," Puck repeats in a menacing tone. He narrows his eyes, silently daring either one of his friends to make something of his new marital status.

"You meet her in New York?" Sam asks, awed.

"Damn straight," Puck says. "Her pa was the surgeon who fixed up my leg after the accident. He hired me as his gardener while I healed up, and what can I say? Santana and I fell in love in her backyard." Puck smiles his idiot smile, like what he just said is actually true.

Santana feels something knot deep inside her. She grits her teeth, knowing that this is the lie to which she and Puck agreed before he checked her into that boarding house in the Tenderloin district. They have to pretend to be married so that Puck can take care of her, so that people will treat her right, so that she has somewhere to be.

"Pleased to meet you, Santana," Sam says warmly, extending a hand to her.

Finn just stares.

"Puck," he mumbles, "She's—"

Before Finn can say the word they're all thinking, Puck punches Finn again and hard. "Shut up," he says through gritted teeth. "She's what I am—a gypsy," he snarls, as if saying the lie with enough conviction will somehow make it true.

(Puck is a Jew, not a gypsy—and Santana isn't even that.)

Santana's eyes flit to the ground and then back to Sam. With more than a little trepidation, she accepts his offered handshake. "Pleased to meet you, too," she mumbles, uncomfortable touching someone like Sam, even though he invited her to do it.

It's then that the bell rings.

By now, the sky has turned to purple around the edges, bruised like a dropped peach. A crowd circles around the fire pit, some folks taking seats on the benches and stools, others standing behind the sitting area. Little gnats buzz through the air, coming out for the night. The noise from earlier hushes as a man with yellow hair steps forward, standing at the head of the fire pit, the blue canopy behind him. For a second, Santana wonders if the man will make a speech.

"That's Sam's pappy, Mr. Evans," Puck whispers, answering a question Santana hasn't asked. "He's our head clown, but he says the—"

Puck's sentences smothers when Mr. Evans clears his throat. Mr. Evans removes his hat, holding it at his waist. On cue, about half of the people assembled remove their hats, in kind. They bow their heads and clasp their hands in front of them. The rest of the company just stares off, suddenly interested in the setting of the sun or fixed on the food Ma has spread over the table.

In a gruff voice, Mr. Evans prays: "O Lord, bless this day our bread and vittles. Grant us forgiveness, forgive our shortcomings, offer us strength, and let us be in your service always. Bless us in our travels on the morrow and preserve us from harm and injury. Watch over our animals, our tents, and our children, as you did Israel's, lost in the wilderness. Give us hope in our differences. Succor us in mercy. In Jesus' name, amen."

As Mr. Evans prays, Santana can't help but glance around at the company, some of them attuned to the ardent cadence of Mr. Evans' voice, others of them actively ignoring him. Until today, Santana had never seen anyone refuse altogether to participate in a prayer before.

When Mr. Evans closes his prayer, the half of the company that had their eyes closed and heads bowed mumble amen along with him; the other persons just grumble and set to moving. Santana wonders if maybe it should offend her that not all the circus folk pray, but somehow she finds herself secretly fascinated.

(She could have never told her grandmother, but Santana can't imagine God, not even in those falling moments between waking and sleep.)

With the prayer done, the company springs back to life, with Ma Jones and her serving girls rescuing the Dutch ovens from the coals and transferring them, steaming, to the tabletop, and almost everyone else forming a queue leading up to the table. Ma's girls dispense metal dishes to the folks coming through the line. The company members then serve up ladles full of food that Santana can smell but not yet see onto their own plates.

"Come on," Puck says, snatching at Santana's sleeve and gesturing for her to join him in the queue. "Let's go get you something for that headache of yours, ladybird."

They hurry to join the back of the line, sandwiching themselves between a plain-looking middle-aged man and Finn. The air smells alive with savory flavors and campfire choke.

Santana feels so hungry she could eat just about anything, if it came to it.

Thankfully, as it turns out, she doesn't have to eat just anything, as Ma's supper tastes just as delicious as it smells.

The meal consists of potatoes and cured ham in gravy, stewed until soft in a Dutch oven on coals, and hot biscuits with butter and red current jam. It isn't anything like what Santana was accustomed to eating at the bachelor cottage, but it does remind her of the fare the doyenne served at the Tenderloin boarding house.

Santana and Puck sit on the grass to eat, surrounded by other seated folk, a forest of slack legs and skirts swaying around them in the deepening twilight. Gnats and moths buzz around their heads, as does the conversational chatter of the assembled circus folk.

Every once in a while, someone will pass by their sitting spot and greet Puck, and Puck will introduce Santana to the person as his wife. To a one, Puck's acquaintances glare at Santana as if she's done something to wrong them. For her part, Santana tries her best to remain polite, but feels something hardening inside her, growing resistant. She focuses on enjoying her meal but can't help but wonder what unspoken rules she must be breaking in order to elicit so much dislike without even having said anything.

Once Santana finishes her food, Puck leads her over to the far side of the mess wagon, where they encounter a couple of serving girls sitting alongside two steel tubs filled with water and suds. Santana wonders from where the tubs came, but doesn't allow herself to ask Puck her question. She thanks the serving girls for taking her plate and they stare at her, lips tight on their faces.

"Come on, ladybird," Puck says. "You don't want to miss it."

"Miss what?" Santana asks.

"The dancing," Puck smiles, guiding Santana back around the mess wagon towards the fire, which now flares in full orange hue.

Sure enough, Santana spots several men in rumpled suits procuring instruments from leather cases: fiddles, guitars, a banjo, tambourine, hand drums, and an autoharp all emerge from their carriers as the band members take seats around the fire pit, close enough to catch the glow so they can see their instruments.

Just then, a wagon pulled by a tall horse rolls up behind the fire. On the flatbed of the wagon sits a full upright harmonium with a shaggy-headed, bearded man sitting at its bench. The band members scoot their stools close to the wagon.

"Here's to another week down!" a voice calls over the scene, and Santana turns to see Ken raising a tin cup to the assembled company, tipping his bowler to them.

A few people cheer in response.

Santana watches in awe as a full hoedown blooms out around her, the company scrabbling to clear the benches and unused stools out of the way and to push back the supper table, making space around the fire.

She listens as the band tunes up their instruments, bows squeaking over strings until they find ripe notes to pluck, fingers babbling out arpeggios on thrumming guitars, the harmonium mumbling as the bespectacled band leader pumps its pipes with air. The company chatters in anticipation.

"You want to dance, ladybird?"

Santana jumps, having momentarily forgotten about Puck until he spoke.

The truth is that Santana hasn't ever had a proper dance with anyone before, at least not when it counts. A part of her longs to dance so much that the intensity of the desire almost frightens her—like the want is so deep and sweet that Santana can't fully think about it or else it will swallow her—but the better part of her fears, lest she make herself look a fool or somehow break rules without realizing it just by dancing. She shivers and then stills.

"No, thank you," she mutters.

(Santana tucks her longing away like a secret lover's photograph in her locket heart.)

"Suit yourself," Puck says. "I'm too bushwhacked to really dance anyway. It'll still be fun to watch, though." He sounds resigned.

As the man at the harmonium raises a hand to the rest of the band, cuing them to take their playing positions, Santana feels a thrill. The fiddles play a high, happy starting note, bright and lively even against the dusk, and members of the company step out onto the dance floor, some coupled, others in groups of three or four. On the count of three, the band breaks into a giddy, cavorting tune, sweet and made for kicks and spins. Santana thumbs at the calico of her skirt, her whole self eager with a sort of placeless excitement, so much so that she doesn't trust herself to speak.

She must smile without realizing it—sometimes she forgets to mind her expressions when really she ought to do so—because Puck leans over and winks at her.

"There's a dance like this almost every down day, if you ever change your mind," he says knowingly.

Men twirl their pretty ladies, spinning in the firelight. The company laughs and claps along to the tune and Santana laughs, too, though she's not sure at what. Despite the length of the day and her poor reception with her new coworkers, Santana feels amused, caught up in the music and the moment, stars making their first winking appearance overhead in the plum firmament.

"You sure you don't want to jig, ladybird?" Puck asks over the music, smirking at her like he knows all her secrets and likes them to a one.

"No, no," Santana demurs, looking away before her smile tells Puck another story.

Her gaze skirts the fire, looking across the way to the other side of the circle formed round the dance floor.

And then she sees them: blue eyes staring at her.

The eyes blink when Santana meets them—they're pretty and cattish, the kind of blue that dye and paint can never exactly replicate—and Santana feels her breath catch.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

The eyes belong to a girl, probably about Santana's age.

For a second, Santana can't bring herself to look away.

Santana takes in the girl's sun-kissed skin, the freckles dotting her nose and bare shoulders, the graceful arc of her neck, her windswept hair, thin cobalt dress, and the way her pink lips part like opened flower petals all at once, the way one would the first impression of a Homer painting.

Santana can't help but wonder for how long the girl has watched her. Without knowing why, Santana suddenly wants more than anything just to speak with the girl, who interests her more than anyone else Santana has seen yet today or maybe ever, actually.

"Don't mind her."

Santana flinches, broken from a trance. For the second time in just minutes, she's forgotten Puck standing at her side.

"What?" Santana splutters.

"That's just the knife thrower's daughter," Puck says, shrugging. "She and her daddy are just as strange as they come. She don't mean any harm by staring, though, I'm sure."

"Sure," Santana agrees quickly, glancing back towards the girl to pair this new epithet with her face.

But the girl isn't there.

Confused, Santana scans the crowd and then the dance floor. The knife thrower's daughter isn't anywhere she can see. The girl disappears so quickly that Santana almost wonders if she perhaps just imagined her, except that Puck acknowledged her existence.

"You sure you don't want to dance?" Puck asks.

Santana can only shake her head, distracted.

(She feels the same way she sometimes does waking up from a dream: like she really must remember something she can't grasp.)

"Suit yourself," Puck says again, amused at her airy answer.

* * *

><p>At half past ten o'clock, the dance dissolves, the musicians packing up their instruments and the company disbanding to head away to their respective sleeping places. By the time Puck leads Santana back to their tent, Santana feels like she's already dreaming, like she fell asleep hours ago and all of this is just some wash.<p>

Stars hang in the boundless indigo sky and a yellow quarter moon lights the plains from overhead. Her bones feel tired and her eyes feel tired, as does every thought in her head. She doesn't think she has ever stayed awake for so many hours in a row in her life.

For his part, Puck respects Santana's sleepiness, keeping quiet as he leads Santana through the residential section of camp, one hand pressed to the small of her back, guiding her down the tent rows. When they reach their tent, Puck parts the tent flaps for Santana, nodding her a silent _After you_, and Santana stumbles inside, finding the space wonderfully dark and still.

"You done good today, ladybird," Puck says in a scratchy voice, and before Santana can process what's happening, he leans down and chucks his forefinger under her chin, lifting her face so he can kiss her.

His lips press clumsily over her whole mouth in the dark, his skin hot with leftover sun heat even hours after dark, stubbly and rough against Santana's face.

The kiss is quick and almost violent—Santana's lips feel smashed, more than anything—so much so that she and Puck don't even trade breath with each other.

It's also Santana's first.

It happens and then is over. Afterwards, Santana can hardly even perceive its ghost upon her skin.

"You take the bed," Puck tells her. "I'll use my mat. We got an early train to catch. Going to Minnesota. I'll wake you when it's time to go."

* * *

><p>As Santana lays still, the darkness deep and cool around her, the night cricketing with bug chirps and the muffled sounds of distant voices and the rustling of the earth, she wonders if a first kiss shouldn't linger longer.<p>

She thinks of tarot cards and wooden spoons and of the soreness in her fingertips from stitching her new hems.

Mostly, though, she thinks of blue eyes staring at her from beyond the fire and of the strange fluttering in her chest she feels when she remembers how the knife thrower's daughter stared at her. Her thoughts swim further and further out to sea, her throat turning thick and breath slowing.

(The knife thrower's daughter leads her, dancing, into dreams.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Special thanks to Han at socallmedaisy for being both my beta and generally awesome!<strong>

**And, yes, Ma Jones is Mercedes Jones.**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translation:<strong>

_**Letania de los Santos : Litany of the Saints**_


	2. The Knife Thrower's Daughter Part I

**Chapter 2: The Knife Thrower's Daughter, Part I**

**Sunday, June 26th, 1898: Worthington, Minnesota**

Puck wakes Santana early—or at least he tries to wake her, rustling her shoulder and whispering promises of hot breakfasts into her ear. At first, Santana resists his coaxing, shrouding her eyes with her palm, rolling onto her side, stubbornly ignoring him.

"Ladybird," Puck says sternly, giving Santana's shoulder another shake. Santana remains silent, still. Puck raises his voice, "Ladybird!"

Santana jolts at the sharpness, her dreams dispersing in an instant.

(They somehow seemed important.)

(Something about dancing.)

Santana opens her eyes but finds only blackness, deep and even, before them. Puck helps her to sit up on the cot and whispers instructions in her ear: "Change into your costume before we head out. Pack your belongings into your bag. Take anything with you that you might want to have on the train." He warms her hands between his, chuckling at her grogginess, before leaving Santana alone to dress in claustrophobic darkness.

Mostly blind and tired, Santana washes her face and teeth in the steel basin, then combs out the snarls that the wind wove into her hair with her horse bristle brush, flinching at every kink, each task taking longer than it ought to, rapt in the sluggishness of the wee hours.

Somehow, Santana feels almost more tired now than she did before she went to sleep last night. The skin on her face feels tight, baked in yesterday's sun, and her fingers still ache from yesterday's sewing. She stumbles through dressing herself, not entirely certain as to how her costume ought to look on her. Eventually, she settles on cinching her belt over her skirt and tying the scarves at her waist. Just as she suspected yesterday, her blouse leaves her shoulders exposed. Her skirt doesn't weigh as much as she had worried it might, but it still hangs heavily under her belt. She wishes she had a mirror in which to check her reflection.

(But, then again, Santana wishes a lot of things.)

For the first several minutes after her waking, Santana feels disoriented, like she can't remember all the things about the circus that she ought to remember and that she'll need to relearn everything about the circus that she learned yesterday, but then her confusion eases; she recognizes the tents and the bustle as she steps outside to meet the day, clothed in her gypsy motley, the open air clearing her mind and filling her with a nervous excitement.

At just after four, the Nebraska sky remains a still and starry indigo. The quarter moon hangs over the horizon, winking down at the plains. The air feels wet and much colder than it did when Santana went to sleep. Dew clings to grass, painting the toes of her shoes as she walks. A low wisp of fog hovers just at Santana's knees, moths and gnats flying clear of it higher up around Santana's face.

Santana finds Puck helping their neighbors—two boys who look about the same age as Puck and Santana, perhaps slightly younger—to tear down their tent, grunting as he uproots one of the tent poles from the hard earth.

Since last night, Puck has changed out of his plain clothes and into his costume, which consists of gray knickers, an embroidered vest with gold and purple thread and various beads woven onto the front, and a red sash tied at his waist. He doesn't wear a hat or shoes and looks every inch mysterious; he actually makes for a convincing gypsy.

"Hey, ladybird," he says, eyeing her costume, his mouth lifting into his thirsty, devilish smirk. "You got everything you need from there?" He nods towards his and Santana's tent.

Santana searches for an answer to the question, but can't find one. Her thoughts feel slow and mud-thick. "Yes," she mumbles, showing him her valise, which she carries with both hands, not sure if she means the word or not.

"Well, all right," Puck says. "Why don't you leave your bag here with me and head over to the mess pit to see if they need any help, then?"

Santana can't think of a good answer to that question, either. She nods blankly and sets her valise in the wet grass next to Puck, then turns in the direction that she supposes the mess pit must be.

(Santana's grandmother always used to scold Santana for keeping so silent in the mornings, but no one here knows Santana well enough to recognize silence as unusual for her.)

As she walks, Santana notices that everyone around her seems to have something to do and someplace to be. Several times, she nearly stumbles into someone in a hurry to get across the camp. Invariably, the person with whom she almost collides will glare at her. Some of them yell.

Santana hears the sharp knells of hammers pounding in the distance. As she looks across the camp, she notices that the flag that once flew at the peak of the big top has disappeared from the skyline, as has the tent itself. Men rush by her carrying tools, boards, and rolls of canvas. The loud, rude trumpet of the bull elephant bugles across the Nebraska plains, and Santana stops to wonder if every morning at the circus will be as hectic as this one.

She only manages to find the mess pit after she overhears a pair of supes mention that they're on their way there and follows them to their destination. She arrives at the mess pit to find it in what she must assume is its typical state of well-organized chaos. Kitchen girls scurry here and there, building up banks of cinders around the Dutch ovens in the fire pit; frying bacon on large, flat griddles over open flames; and lifting pans of biscuits from the hearth before they burn, wearing towels wrapped over their hands to keep from singeing their fingers. They poke fun at one another as they work, smiling and snapping their towels at one another's backsides, already awake despite the early hour.

"Girl, move!"

Santana jolts just before Ma Jones crashes into her, carrying a whole pan of hot biscuits between her towel-wrapped hands. At once, Santana feels more awake than she has since Omaha, though not in a welcome way. Her heart beats suddenly in her throat.

"Sorry," she stammers, wondering if she'll ever do anything to please Ma Jones.

Ma just barrels past Santana, rolling her eyes as if she has never encountered such a ridiculous person in her life.

"I told you to stay outta my way! Now don't just stand there!" she snaps. "If you're gonna be in my kitchen, you best get working!"

Santana wants to ask Ma what she ought to do, but Ma stops paying attention to her before she can even form her question. Ma sets the biscuits on the table and then moves to a fresh task, furiously mixing a bowl of hotcake batter with her wooden spoon, little flecks of the concoction spattering her apron, neck, and chin as she stirs. Santana looks around at the kitchen girls, wondering if they might be willing to instruct her as to what she ought to do, but then she remembers the boarding house in the Tenderloin district and finds that she can't bring herself to importune them.

Instead, she shuffles up alongside the mess chuck wagon, hiding under its shadow, watching the girls do their clockwork dance, circling around both one another and the fire; painting the air with sweet, salty breakfast smells; calling one another by names Santana has yet to learn; moving with a seamlessness that Santana might never be able to imitate. Just like yesterday, Santana feels a desperate, impossible loneliness, silent in a sea of noise, still in a blur of movement.

As the girls excavate the Dutch ovens from the cinders and move them to the tabletop, Ma Jones reaches for what looks like a long, bristleless broom handle that sits propped against the end of the table. Once she has the handle securely in her hands, Ma stands on tiptoe, using it to ring a great iron bell attached to the top of one of the upright canopy poles. A toll clangs out over the camp, and, almost immediately, circus folk begin pouring into the mess area, some of them sleepyheaded, others already fully awake.

In addition to the foods Santana watched Ma and the girls prepare, Ma also serves coffee in steel pots and butter for the biscuits. As Santana debates getting herself a place in line, Puck swoops in from behind her, pinching her sides, sending a shiver through her whole body and starting her heart sprinting again in her chest.

"Hey, ladybird! You awake yet?" he asks, a wily look in his eyes.

"I—," Santana stammers.

"Come on," Puck says, tugging at one of the scarves at her waist. "Breakfast first, talk later. We got a train to catch!"

* * *

><p>The black haze of gnats hovering over the grass makes breakfast unpleasant for Santana, as does the hardness and orneriness of her stomach. It's too early for Santana to really feel hungry, but she knows that if she doesn't eat now, she might not get the chance to eat again until much, much later in the day.<p>

Not wanting a repeat of yesterday, she forces down biscuits, bacon, and coffee, ignoring her nausea and waving insects away from her face, trying not to grimace as Puck makes wet, gross noises of animal appreciation wolfing down his hotcakes.

The meal ends almost as quickly as it began, with everyone hurrying to give their used plates over to the serving girls at the wash tubs and move the stools and benches up into the back of the mess wagon, preparing them for travel. Santana loses her bearings as shoulders and elbows swirl around her, not knowing where to stand or how to help.

"Move!"

"Out of the way!"

"Get!"

It seems like no matter where she decides to stand, she inconveniences someone.

After about three too many near-collisions, Santana tucks herself into a corner and watches as the whole camp comes down around her, white tents spilling into the grass like milk puddles, workers hitching wagons to mules and horses, gathering up boards and canopies and spiriting them out of eyesight to some unseen somewhere. Santana feels like a ghost observing the living go about their breathing business, unable to influence anything. The whole process takes less than a quarter hour, the company moving with remarkable speed and efficacy.

Just as the workers deconstruct the last of the tents around Santana, Puck appears at Santana's side once more, fitting one of his big, rough hands around her wrist as though it belonged there. He carries both his rucksack and Santana's valise in his free hand.

"Time to go, ladybird," he says cheerily, leading Santana through the mist toward the road.

After a certain distance, Puck motions for Santana to jog with him, directing her toward a cart trundling away from camp. Santana does as Puck tells her, taking two strides for his every one. Puck moves briskly, and Santana struggles to keep up with him, holding her skirts up around her knees, trying not to trip at every step.

"Puck?" she calls, wondering if they'll have to run all the way to the train depot.

He ignores her, just motioning for Santana to run faster until they catch up to the cart.

"Hup, hup!" he says, when they finally flank it, lifting Santana under the elbow and urging her to jump with him onto its side.

Santana shivers with uneasiness but finds she has no choice but to follow Puck into the air, the soles of her shoes lifting from the sleek grass, her arms stretching out before her to catch a hold somewhere. Even with Puck's help, Santana barely makes it onto the cart, her feet scrabbling awkwardly before finding a perch on its reach, her arms seizing desperately over its side.

(Once she settles, Santana feels like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to flotsam out at sea, not unlike that reporter in Mr. Crane's story from the _Scribner_.)

All around her, other members of the company take the same measures as Puck, latching onto the various moving wagons and buggies, the whole circus making its exodus from the empty plains where the white haloed city once stood.

One of the boys whose tent Puck helped to disassemble earlier in the morning leaps up onto the cart alongside Puck, smiling. He's much shorter than Puck is and wears a suit, which, though raggedy—with patches sewn over various tears around the elbows, at the shoulders, and over his front breast pocket—nevertheless appears strangely trim and dandy, like the boy has taken too much care in making his outfit appear careless.

A black trilby hat sits atop his sleek, dark, hair, and he wears a neat bowtie at his collar. His face seems chummy, lighted with excitement. He has long, fey eyelashes, pink lips, and a quirky, expressive brow.

On the whole, the boy acts cheerful, despite the earliness of the day, but Santana finds she can't match his sentiment. Whoever the boy is, Santana feels grateful to him for not trying to make conversation as the cart rattles onto the road, heading toward the depot. Given the hour, Santana prefers silence.

(She doesn't trust herself to speak without somehow offending someone anyway.)

The circus procession steers clear of the main street through Tekamah, turning just before it reaches the town to take a back road around the city. Santana supposes that this detour adds some time to the journey, but she can also imagine why the drivers might want to avoid steering close to so many shops and houses before the sun has even risen.

The circus in transit makes a magnificent sight.

Amidst the more pedestrian vehicles of the processional roll livestock carts filled with braying asses and decorated white ponies. Snarls rumble from the inside of one of the boxed wagons, vivid illustrations of lions and tigers in ferocious repose painted on the side of the vehicle beneath the snappy, gold circus logo.

Well over half the company has changed into their costumes in preparation for their arrival in Minnesota; now they stride, swathed in bright colors and bombastic patterns, alongside their buggies and prams down the road.

Here are all the clowns that Santana missed yesterday.

Of course, the most impressive sight amongst the lot is that of the three massive African elephants occupying the center of the road, their flatted feet taking surprisingly graceful, curling steps upon the dirt, their jangling limbs bending in odd places and dusty flanks heaving with breath and inertia. Under the cool dark of the early morning, their massive bodies throw long shadows out before them, creating a herd of monsters in silhouette upon the earth, disproportionate and alien.

Santana supposes that the biggest of the three elephants must be the fellow who made all the noise yesterday and this morning. Behind him walk two smaller—though "smaller" is only a relative term—animals, each one of them with its tusks filed down to harmless blunts at the ends. The elephants walk with crimson, belled harnesses fitted over their chests and shoulders, pulling the biggest of the circus wagons behind them as if it weighs nothing.

Santana can't help but hold her breath upon seeing them for the first time; their bigness both frightens and thrills her until she feels a nervous titter in her chest.

As the circus arrives at the depot, Puck hustles Santana down from the cart and leads her not up the platform as she might expect but rather a ways down the line, walking alongside the long trail of boxcars at the end of the train amidst a crowd of other circus folk, some costumed, some not. The boy in the trilby hat from the cart follows after them, obviously going to the same place as Puck.

Instead of riding in one of the passenger cars near the engine, it would appear that the circus folk must travel like cargo in the seatless, classless freight compartments of the industrial locomotive.

Finding a car with its doors open, Puck takes a great leap, pulling himself up onto its flatbed. He then offers a hand to Santana, yanking her up alongside him, with the trilby boy following after them.

Santana watches with interest as other members of the company either scramble into the car beside her and Puck or continue on towards more unseen cars further down the line. She sees some familiar faces amongst the rabble, including those of the Flying Dragon Changs and the round lady, and soon finds herself thinking about the knife thrower's daughter, wondering to where the girl disappeared last night and imagining how she spent her morning.

Perched at the door to the car, Santana scans the crowds, looking for a flash of golden hair or the inimitable blue of the girl's eyes, but finds nothing quite as interesting or distinctive as those features amongst the lot.

Eventually, Sam and Finn heave themselves into the car and join up with Puck, laughing. Finn still wears his work clothes from yesterday, but Sam has changed into a raggedy suit with a silk boutonniere and bouffant, red bowtie. He carries both a floppy hat and what looks like a small, leather shaving kit with him. When Santana glances at his feet, she notes that he's wearing oversized, holey shoes with toes that extend far beyond the end of his foot.

After greeting his friends, Puck tugs Santana into a corner just as someone on the outside of the car shouts a go-ahead to the signalman. Puck and the other boys settle down on the floor, and Santana follows their lead, taking care to arrange her skirts modestly over her legs. No one bothers to shut the doors to the car before the train jogs forward, leaving the station. Santana feels a low lurch in her stomach and startles, pulling her knees up by her chest, uneasy with the openness of the car and still unaccustomed to rail travel, despite her westward journey yesterday and the few days before.

Just as they discussed last night, Puck and his friends take to playing the card game euchre, with Puck and the trilby boy on one team and Sam and Finn on the other. Puck passes around a tin of chaw from which the boys happily pinch up plugs for themselves, situating dark gobs of tobacco in the pouts of their lips and the pouches of their cheeks, cussing at and ribbing one another as they deal their hands, making more noise than anyone else in the car.

Wind whips past the open car doors, causing Santana to shiver and arrange her skirts more thoroughly over her legs. She feels a chill whisk at her earlobes and tighten her jaw. She shudders, searching out the first hints of sunrise as the train races along the track, wondering all the while if Minnesota will look anything like Nebraska once the circus arrives at its new destination. The scenery outside the car shifts from well-groomed barley fields and farmland into sprawling wilderness as the train travels farther and farther away from the depot.

For the most part, Puck and his friends ignore Santana, too focused on placing penny bets on their own luck and attempting to skunk one another to really pay much mind to anyone around them. Santana doesn't understand the rules to their game, and no one bothers to explain them to her. She feels invisible and cold. She tries not to think about New York.

When the boys start gleeking fat globs of chewed tobacco onto the deck of the car, her stomach turns over, still not settled after such an early breakfast, and she thinks she might be sick. Puck says something vulgar about Finn's mother, and Santana blanches, queasy to her core and embarrassed by Puck's impropriety.

After a few more minutes and a few more spit wads, Santana decides that she can no longer abide either such crassness or the wind blowing against her face. Slowly, she shifts to her knees, and, more slowly still, she stands. When none of the boys says a word about her change in position, Santana takes that as their permission for her to walk away from the game.

Unfortunately, though the car moves at a steady pace, Santana finds herself unstable on her feet. She sways as she steps, feeling dizzy, and only makes it a few paces before she very nearly stumbles over a person huddled on the ground in a blanket.

"Careful!" the girl warns loudly, throwing up a hand to prevent Santana from falling onto her.

Santana collapses against the wall of the car. "Sorry," she mumbles, taking a seat before she injures either herself or someone else.

Before Santana can even settle herself, the girl in the blanket hones in on her.

"You must be the new gypsy," she says in a way that sounds as if she intends to inform Santana of this fact rather than confirm it with her. "I'm Rachel Berry. You and I will be working together."

Turning to face her, Santana sees that Rachel Berry has great, brown eyes, pretty eyelashes, European features, a wide mouth, and a complexion nearly as dark as Puck's. Despite the fact that Rachel wears a pleasant expression, something in her countenance seems almost sad to Santana.

(Santana can't help but wonder if maybe there isn't such a thing as special circus loneliness; maybe Rachel feels it, too.)

"I'm Santana—," Santana starts, but can't finish, unable to bring herself to say _Puckerman_ in place of her own last name.

Rachel doesn't seem to notice Santana's stall.

"Santana," she repeats. "Santana. That's Spanish. My stage persona is of Spanish descent—from Seville, which is, of course, in Andalusia. As one might expect, given the present political hostilities, Mr. Adams has considered changing my affiliations to French or Italian instead, but I assured him that my fame already exceeds the petty scruples of the conflict and that to change my act at this late date would put an insurmountable strain on my ability to realistically depict the part. I've already given myself over to Seville. Of course, considering my reputation, I'm sure you understand."

It takes a second for Santana to realize that Rachel has actually stopped talking and wants Santana to respond to her statement. Santana has never heard anyone speak so breathlessly before or talk so much about herself upon meeting a first acquaintance.

Unable to think of anything else to say, Santana just repeats, "Your reputation?" wondering how anyone can be so persistently chatty at this wretched hour of morning.

Of course, it's the wrong thing to say.

A dark look passes over Rachel's face. She narrows her eyes, searching for that same unidentifiable something in Santana that Mr. Adams and Ma Jones found lacking when they scrutinized her yesterday.

Rachel's expression turns stony and serious.

"I don't mean to be rude"—during the two weeks Santana spent in the Tenderloin district, she learned very quickly that those words almost invariably preface rudeness, a point which Rachel Berry reconfirms to her now—"but because you're so new to the circus, I somehow doubt that either Ken or Mr. Adams has had the opportunity to explain to you yet the very sovereign nature of my performance. They may group me with Puck as a gypsy, but my primary act requires no participation but my own, and, indeed, goes over best when I am free to perform without interruption and without any outside antics distracting me from my art. I think I should inform you, then, that while Puck may require your assistance, especially given his recent injury, I don't, and I would appreciate it if you would afford me the space I need to execute my skills to my fullest abilities."

It's the rudest bit of politeness Santana has ever heard.

Later on, Santana will blame the early hour for it, and, later on, Santana will say that it happens because she doesn't feel well and because she is in a strange place and out of sorts and she forgot to check herself, but right now Santana simply blurts out a response to Rachel's discourtesy on impulse.

"Well, I'll be sure to stay out of your way, then."

It's exactly what Rachel Berry wants to hear but not at all how she wants to hear it.

Santana's voice sounds biting to her own ears, harsh in the way that other people may speak to her, but not in the way that she ought to speak to other people. She stiffens the instant the words leave her mouth, suddenly aware that she's just broken all the rules.

An emotion Santana can't read flashes over Rachel's face and then fades, replaced by deep shock. Rachel couldn't look more surprised if Santana were to have slapped her.

Santana scrambles to cover her mistake, frantically searching for some way to undo the offense. She can't bring herself to apologize because, frankly, she doesn't feel sorry; she knows that any pretense otherwise will only come out sounding sharp and disingenuous, as well. Her mind flashes back to the parrot-hued billboards dividing the residential camp from the circus grounds.

"Is it true that you can shatter crystal by the sound of your voice alone?" she says suddenly, tone much kinder than it was before.

Rachel regards Santana warily for a second, her great, brown eyes checking Santana's face for any sign of hostility, but then she nods proudly.

"I can," she says, smiling. "Really, I'm surprised you haven't heard of me yet, though you'll certainly have the chance to hear me every night now. Like my stage namesake, I boast an impressive range—from the G below middle C to a high E6—and have a commanding stage presence. Mr. Adams commissioned that marquee for me when I was only fourteen years in age, though my father tells me that Mr. Adams would have had it done earlier if he had thought that he could pay me such an honor without exciting the other performers to a state of frenzied jealousy."

* * *

><p>Four and a half hours later, Santana knows everything there is to know about Rachel Berry, from the facts that Rachel's father is a famous magician from Prague who now works for Mr. Adams as part of the circus and that Rachel's mother was a virtuosa who once sang for Puccini before suffering a young, tragic, and—as Rachel frames it—romantic death from the consumption, to the facts that Rachel has trained her voice since infancy and that she performed for William McKinley when he was governor of Ohio.<p>

Santana also knows that she dislikes Rachel Berry.

Santana finds that, much like Puck, Rachel has a knack for mistaking her cues in just such a way that Rachel speaks loudly when Santana craves quiet and yet somehow thinks she's doing Santana a favor just by talking. Santana refrains from snapping at Rachel again but only because she bites her lips into her mouth and refuses to do more than either nod or shake her head on the infrequent occasion when Rachel pauses to ask her a question.

Judging by the didactic way that Rachel speaks to her, Santana can only suppose that Rachel believes her stupid or incapable of understanding proper English. For her part, Santana finds Rachel conceited, condescending, and grating.

(It's a wonder that Rachel ever has any voice left with which to sing, considering how much she seems to like talking about herself.)

The train pulls into the depot in Worthington at a quarter past nine o'clock, and Santana all but leaps from the car when Puck calls for her to follow him out into the open air. It takes another twenty minutes for the supes and railway men to unload all the circus equipment, wagons, and animals from the freight cars at the back of the train.

While waiting for the circus to ready itself to move, Santana observes the assembled company, watching with interest as Sam and the boy in the trilby hat open Sam's leather pouch and remove tins of face paint from it. They sit down on the depot platform astride from each other, their knees touching, and, with an especial care and attention, apply colors and flourishes to each other's features with small brushes and practiced strokes.

The boys pull exaggerated faces at one another, lifting their brows and opening their mouths so as to make every angle of their visages visible for painting. Sam stretches his red lips into a funny, elongated _o_ and his companion circles them first in white, then in black, tracing swooping downward lines around the white space to give Sam the appearance of a frown. He swishes false stubble onto Sam's chin, reddens Sam's cheeks and nose, and puts blue, triangular teardrops under Sam's eyes, before painting Sam's forehead white.

In turn, Sam makes the trilby boy's whole face pale, even gently whitewashing his eyelids while the boy keeps them closed in perfect trust. Sam rouges the tip of the boy's nose, turning it a daring red. He adds some accents around the boy's eyes and helps him to straighten out his bowtie before breaking away.

The two boys stand transformed, Sam a sad clown, the trilby boy a tramp.

When they take notice of Santana staring at them, she quickly looks away. As more and more people pour from the train, Santana alternately avoids Rachel Berry and searches through the crowd, thinking, on the peripheries of her mind, about pretty cat eyes and to where it is that nameless people go when you can't see them.

* * *

><p>Whereas the drivers seemed not to want anyone to see the circus making its way out of Tekamah, now they seem to want everyone to see the circus headed into Worthington.<p>

The city sits on the edge of a sprawling, cobalt lake and has a wide but unpaved main street, lined with brick faced stores and various wagons parked adjacent to the sidewalks. Though the land in Minnesota lies as flat as the land in Nebraska, it seems entirely a different kind of country, almost suffocatingly green, with substantial trees, whereas Nebraska was both scrubby and barren. Worthington is less a plain than it is a prairie.

Having loaded back onto their carts and wagons prior to leaving the depot, the circus company enters the city by way of a parade, the elephants pulling their great load out in front of the rest of the file, various performers singing from their buggy perches, the Flying Dragon Changs performing handstands and somersaults in the street, Sam and the rest of the clown troupe running to greet the children watching them with wide, adoring eyes from the edge of the road.

It seems as though the entire population of Worthington has turned out to watch the circus come into town, many of them dressed in their Sunday best, with flowered bonnets and smart caps sitting jaunty on their heads, wonderment in their eyes, even amongst the grown men and women. Santana can't help but feel their same awe; though she spent all day yesterday living in a circus camp, today marks her first time ever truly seeing the circus in its full array.

The girls in the red habits ride sidesaddle dressage down the center of the street, mounted on smart, white horses with plumes attached to their heads, following after the woman with the switch, whose steed is the smartest and whitest of all. Behind them come snake handlers with long, muscular constrictors and pythons wrapped around their bodies like eveningwear stoles, and the bulk of the freak show, including the round lady and the tall lady, who now sports a rather convincing-looking beard on her chin though she hadn't one yesterday afternoon when Santana last saw her.

The circus moves in a train of color and sound, with the band bringing up the rear of the procession, arranged on the flatbed of a wagon, playing a triumphal march. Last night the band strummed on strings, with fiddles and guitars, but today they act as a windjammer outfit, with coronets, clarinets, trombones, and baritones, drums, and, of course, the director's harmonium.

Caught up in the kaleidoscope beauty, Santana nearly forgets that she's part of the spectacle and not just watching it until she hears little children standing at the edge of the road, hollering for their parents, saying, "Look! Mama, Papa—gypsies!" and sees them pointing up at her and Puck with tiny, stubby fingers.

Briefly, Santana sees in her own mind herself through the eyes of the children: mysterious and strangely clothed, with bangles shining in the sun on her wrist and a jingling coin bracelet tied at her ankle, hair gleaming so black that it nearly reflects blue in the vivid midmorning light. Her eyes don't look like their eyes, and her face doesn't look like their faces. She's caballed, dark, and different from anything they've ever seen before.

(Suddenly, Santana feels as if something inside her has just fallen away.)

When the children wave at Santana, she finds that she cannot wave back at them. Something in her feels ashamed and ever more unbearably lonely.

The circus proceeds down the main street in the town and then circles back toward the train depot, eventually arriving at the outskirts of a stretch of forest alongside a long field. As the carts and wagons come to a halt, Santana dismounts from her perch. Landing on the grass, she observes that the supes and workers who went on ahead of the performers have already partially erected the white city using the same dimensions and arrangement as they did in Tekamah.

Off in the distance, Santana sees the infrastructure of the big top standing naked, like the skeletal ribcage of a large animal rising up, sun dried, from the earth.

"This way, ladybird," Puck says, gesturing for Santana to follow him through the field of half-standing white wall tents rising like ghosts from a battlefield.

With the rucksack and valise flapping at his side, Puck hurries through the narrow tent rows, offering quick hellos to those who greet him along the way though he doesn't stop for anyone. As Santana jogs to keep up with him, she feels blisters swelling at her ankles from all the running she has already done today.

Once they reach their tent—which Santana finds indistinguishable from all the other tents surrounding it—Puck tucks his and Santana's luggage inside and tells Santana that he ought to go help Ken set up the livestock pens.

"You need anything from me before I go, ladybird?" he asks, squinting at Santana through the tent shade.

Santana shakes her head no.

For a second, Puck looks at Santana with deep concern grained into his features, like he doesn't believe what she just told him. His brow furrows. He doesn't say anything, but when he steps forward to leave, he makes a point to stroke Santana's arm, his thumb running over her elbow through her sleeve. His expression bespeaks such pity that Santana can't help but wonder if Puck sees some kind of sadness in her—or if he just sees the circus loneliness, maybe.

"You call if you need anything," Puck says somberly. "I'll see you at lunchtime."

* * *

><p>With no instructions from Puck as to where to go or what to do in his absence, Santana finds herself wandering the camp feeling very much like a specter—like she can see everyone, but no one can see her.<p>

(Can you really be lost if no one looks for you?)

"Girl, you best not be just standing around here gawking when there's work to do!"

Santana all but jumps out of her shoes and spins to see Ma Jones marching up behind her, a sizable stack of clothing and a small sewing bag bundled in her arms. It appears that Santana somehow wandered into the mess area without meaning to do so.

Before Santana can even apologize, Ma roughly shoves the bulk of the clothing against Santana's chest.

"Mrs. Schuester keeps trying to pawn this mess off on my girls, but they have better things to do. Since you seem to have the time, you can do this hemming and get it back to Mrs. Schuester before lunch, since I doubt you have anywhere else you need to be anyway," Ma says meanly.

Santana splutters, not quite sure what's just happened to her. The clothing weighs heavy in her arms; there must be at least five skirts in the stack. Santana feels a twinge of indignation and wants to complain that she won't be able to finish this job on her own within the allotted time frame, but she finds herself unable to challenge Ma, who somehow looks more dangerous right now than even the bull elephant did during the morning parade. Santana's retort dies in her throat.

"Yes, ma'am," she says, deferent.

Ma's face twitches, an expression Santana can't read passing over it and then disappearing.

"Here," Ma says, piling the sewing bag on top of the clothing. "Mrs. Schuester's already marked all the hems. All you need to do is follow the lines. Now don't just stay there with your jaw hanging slack. Go on! Get!"

She shoos Santana toward the edge of the mess area and then hurries away to the chuck wagon herself, disappearing inside it in a trice.

For a second, Santana stands where Ma leaves her, amazed at her misfortune at having caught Ma in such a sour mood. She still for the life of her can't figure out what it is that she must have done to cause Ma to take such an especial disliking to her, but she supposes that whatever it was must have been bad.

Inexcusable, even.

It's only after a few seconds that Santana notices the sound of derisive laughter behind her and turns to see a couple of Ma's kitchen girls enjoying a good chuckle at her expense. When the girls catch sight of Santana's shocked face, they become even more amused, busting up as if Santana were somehow a joke made expressly for their diversion.

Heated embarrassment blooms in Santana, and all of the meanness she experienced yesterday floods back to her. She remembers the sharp words, shoving, and loathing, the distrustful looks, and feels a sharp pang inside.

Before she can stop herself, Santana reacts.

"You think you're really clever, mocking the new girl, don't you?" she snaps, a strange, new viciousness in her voice that she has seldom heard there before. "Well, go ahead and laugh away because while all of you must spend your days cowering in Ma Jones' kitchen, I can go wherever I please in this camp!"

Santana's eyes grow large as the smiles vanish from the girls' faces, fear and offense replacing their mirth in an instant. Suddenly, Santana feels as though she'll be sick, the same as she did when she watched Puck and his friends hock their chaw on the train. Her whole body rings with nerves like a struck string on an instrument. In desperation, she realizes that she can do nothing to take the words back now, despite how instantly she regrets them.

Dread fills her, turning her body both too cold and too hot at once. Without waiting for the kitchen girls to respond, Santana bolts from the mess pit, sewing work still piled in her arms. She can actually feel the red throbbing in her face and her heartbeat pounding out a war drum cadence in her ears. Fear, anger, and shame all run equally through her veins, each its own toxin; if she could board a train back to New York in this minute, she would do it, just to get far, far away from this place and these people and her own foolish mistakes.

Before she can fully flee the scene, she hears the shocked, self-defending whispers of the kitchen girls hiss out in her wake.

She tries to convince herself that what just happened doesn't matter, that done is done, and that her outburst ultimately lost her nothing, considering that no one around here aside from Puck liked her anyway, but the argument somehow sounds better to her head than it does to her heart.

(After fear, after anger, after shame, Santana simply feels alone.)

* * *

><p>Santana strides far enough away from the mess pit that she can no longer hear or see the catty kitchen girls before she slows to a halt. She finds herself in the deep, purple shadow of a block of tents, one of which seems bigger than just the standard sleeping accommodations Santana has seen so far, the others all of the typical size.<p>

She takes a full minute to calm herself, breathing through pursed lips, half hunched over the mess of clothing she carries in her arms. Once her heartbeat slows, she slumps, defeated, into the grass, her gypsy skirt fanning out around her like a sheet tossed over a bed. She feels like someone just stole all the wind from her sails.

Unable to stop herself, Santana starts thinking about everything she should have done, as opposed to what she did do, back at the mess pit. She hates herself for her sharp tongue but hates Ma's kitchen girls even more for teasing her when she never did anything wrong or abused them at all until just a moment ago.

Now that she has shouted at them, Santana knows that the girls won't ever treat her kindly, no matter how she might prostrate herself before them or attempt to win their favor. Tears prick at the corners of Santana's eyes, but she fights them back, swallowing down a sob with an audible gulp, biting her lips into her mouth.

(She can't allow herself to cry because she knows that if she starts now, she might not be able to stop.)

Eager to busy her mind with anything other than working through her shame and guilt, Santana starts to sort out her hemming work. Just running her hands over the fabric calms her, at least a bit. Something about the tactility of the motion and feeling the thick swathe of the cotton helps Santana to just breathe and be—reminds her somewhat of her former home.

She sees Mrs. Schuester's smart chalk lines drawn across the hems of the skirts, instructing her as to where she ought to cut and sew. Sighing, she pulls the pair of right-handed scissors from the sewing bag. Even with the wrong scissors, she'll have an easier time hemming these skirts than she did her own skirt yesterday, seeing as Mrs. Schuester has already marked the lines for her. She turns the scissors clumsily over her fingers and picks up the edge of the first garment, eyeballing it before she makes a snip.

It's then that she feels a tug on the clothing pile.

For a split second, Santana's brain registers that someone has probably come to tease her or tell her that she started about her work all wrong already, but then Santana looks up and suddenly forgets everything else.

She finds blue eyes staring at her.

Before she can stop herself, Santana gasps.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

The knife thrower's daughter is even more beautiful up close than from far away, sylvan strange and striking, like one of Mr. Malory's fairy maidens emerged from an enchanted wood. Gold burnishes her skin, weaves through her hair, and flecks around the deepest dark of her eyes. She peers into Santana's face, mouth lifting but not yet smiling.

For the first time in more than three weeks, Santana feels like someone really sees her.

The girl sits just beyond Santana's shade, squinting in the sunlight, barefoot and wearing a tatty blue sundress, several shades darker than her eyes in color. For a long while, she and Santana just stare at each other, barely breathing, but then the girl gives a silent laugh, amused at something, and looks away, too bashful to stare any longer. She tugs the top skirt from the pile onto the grass in front of her, running her fingers over Mrs. Schuester's measure markings, as if reading them with her hands.

It takes a second for Santana to realize what she's doing.

"Why are you helping me?" Santana blurts.

The girl meets Santana's gaze. Something in her eyes catches the very quick of Santana, clear and thoughtful, with the same pinpoint beauty as a hunter's moon floating in the afternoon blue.

"Because I like you," the girl says as if it's the simplest thing in the world.

"But you don't even know me," Santana reminds her. "How can you like me?"

The question comes out small and with perhaps too much genuine astonishment in it.

The girl looks at Santana again, wearing the same curious expression as before. She quirks her head to one side and squints at Santana through the sunlight, taking in Santana from every angle.

"I don't know why," she admits. Then, suddenly, "I'm Brittany."

Santana has never met anyone called by that name before or even read about anyone called by that name in any of her books, but somehow she finds that it fits the girl—_Brittany_—in such a way that she can't imagine her having a more common name at all.

"I'm Santana," Santana returns, breathless, though she can't say why.

Brittany offers Santana her first genuine smile, pretty primrose lips lifting at the corners. "That's a pretty name," she says artlessly. She has a wonderfully plain way of talking, like everything she says is somehow just so.

"Thank you," Santana replies, heat rising to her cheeks.

(She suddenly wishes that she had thought to tell Brittany that her name was pretty when she first heard it, too.)

"You shouldn't let them bother you, you know," Brittany says, as if picking up from a previous conversation.

Santana doesn't answer because she doesn't understand. Instead, she waits for Brittany to explain what she means, trusting that Brittany will indeed do so. Sure enough, Brittany draws a breath and looks up and away for a second, like a schoolchild recalling a recitation so that she might perform it for her headmaster. When she speaks next, she does so quickly, almost breathless.

(Santana gathers that Brittany has wanted to say whatever it is that she intends to say next ever since sitting down beside Santana in the grass.)

"The kitchen girls. Ma Jones. Everybody," Brittany clarifies. "You shouldn't listen to what they say about you. I've grown up around them, and I know they can be sharp, but they're not all bad, and it's not because of anything you've done wrong, really. You haven't done anything wrong. It's them—they're just scared of you."

"Scared of me?" Santana repeats, incredulous, not sure how she could scare anyone—and especially not the likes of Ma Jones or the other circus folk, who seem much larger than life and so proud and resilient.

Brittany nods, absentmindedly twisting at the grass to her side until it tears off in a clump. "What people don't know scares them," Brittany says, picking at another grass tuft, eyes flicking between Santana's face and the shadowed earth. "It's just that you're a gilly, see—"

"A gilly?" Santana interrupts, unfamiliar with the term.

"Someone who comes from outside the circus," Brittany explains gently. "Most of us were born here or joined up young—and Mr. Adams, well, he owns the place, so he's an exception. The circus mostly kept to itself before, but now that Mr. Adams might have to sell out to Mr. Fabray, the company feels extra watchful. Circus folks aren't so different from everybody else that way. People always put out their claws around strangers when they feel unsafe. It's just that you're different, that's all."

(On Brittany's lips, _different_ somehow sounds like _special_.)

Brittany's explanation is simple but probably truer than Brittany herself even knows; Santana is different than the people around her in too many ways. Not only is she a gilly, but she also doesn't fit neatly inside the framework of the rules. She feels like a child wearing clothes that don't belong to her, some oversized, some under.

(Santana tucks Brittany's wisdom carefully away to save for later.)

"Were you born at the circus?" Santana asks, suddenly curious about everything that has to do with Brittany.

Brittany nods and reaches for the sewing kit, from which she procures a seam-ripper. She sets to picking stitches out of the skirt at her lap, according to Mrs. Schuester's markings.

"My father's father came from West Virginia, and he was circus folk and my father, too. I've been here my whole life," she says fondly, casting a glance at the tents surrounding them. She smiles at Santana. "After Mama died, it's just been Daddy and me, and Mr. Adams does right by us. I know everyone around here, mostly." She pauses and looks at Santana, thoughtful. "How'd you get here, darlin'?"

(Something flutters in Santana at that last word, which curls with the sweetest, faintest echo of what must be Brittany's father's father's twang.)

Santana pauses, considering her story. She doesn't want to lie to Brittany, if she can help it.

"Well, after my father died, I had nowhere else to go, so Puck brought me here with him," she answers slowly.

She remembers the scissors in her hand and opens them over the hem of the skirt she holds, angling the blades to make the first cut. She feels a strange nervousness waiting for Brittany to respond to her answer.

Brittany teases out a thread using the seam-ripper. "Didn't your daddy leave you anything?" she asks.

"He tried to make provisions for me," Santana says, meeting Brittany's eyes.

Brittany looks at Santana with a perfect evenness, and, though Santana doesn't know what she's done to deserve it—if anything—she feels certain that Brittany trusts her. Without knowing why, she finds that she trusts Brittany back.

Santana draws a breath.

"My father was a surgeon," she explains, "and very well-respected. He kept a bachelor's apartment near Lexington Plaza while Abuela"—the word slips out before Santana can stop it—"and I lived in his brownstone cottage in Gramercy Park. He would have supper with us in the evenings and visit during the weekends." She pauses, biting her lips into her mouth, and says, in a small voice, barely above a whisper, "He never married my mother."

It's the first time she says it aloud to anyone.

Santana expects to see Brittany flinch or maybe recoil at this revelation. She expects that, at the very least, Brittany will look at her differently than how she had looked at her before.

But Brittany's look doesn't change. She still stares deeply at Santana, somehow seeing Santana though Santana has been all but invisible for the past three weeks.

"Pass me the scissors, darlin'?"

It's not what Santana expected to hear from Brittany at all.

Suddenly, Santana wants to both laugh and cry. Instead, she just smiles—really smiles—for the first time since her father died. Her face feels tight around the corners of her mouth, almost like she had forgotten how to be happy and had gotten out of the practice of showing it.

(For some reason, Santana suspects that Brittany will help her to remember.)

"Here you go."

"Thanks. How about we trade?" Brittany passes the seam-ripper, usable with either hand, over to Santana. Once she has the scissors, Brittany sets to trimming the skirt. She flashes another glance at Santana, picking back up on their conversation. "Why didn't he marry her? Weren't they in love?" she asks simply.

Santana had never thought about whether her parents had loved each other before, but now that Brittany asks, Santana supposes that they must have, or at least that her father must have loved her mother, because he always called her his angel and spoke fondly of her to Santana in the same soft voice that he used to bid Santana goodnight and sweet dreams and to sing Santana songs from San Juan when he felt especially fond.

"Yes, they were," Santana answers. She thinks about the reason why her parents never married—the logical, rule-bound reason that has nothing to do with the heart. "But my mother, she was—she was like Ma Jones, I think."

For a second, Brittany's expression clouds, and Santana wonders if she might be confused. Santana dreads having to say the word that she would have to say to clarify the situation and hopes that Brittany won't make her do it.

Brittany doesn't.

"You mean you don't know if she was for sure?" Brittany asks, cutting the skirt she has in hand, carefully snipping along Mrs. Schuester's chalk lines.

Santana thinks back to hushed conversations she overheard between her father's lawyers when they came to appraise the bachelor cottage after his death.

_From whence the child? His mistress?_

_Yes. His letters say she was a griffe._

"She died when I was a baby. I don't remember her," Santana admits. "But my father, he was—he and my grandmother came from San Juan in Puerto Rico. My grandmother was as dark as Puck, not as dark as me. But my father could pass. He practiced under the surname Lucas. He pretended to be—like you."

Brittany considers Santana for a moment. "Mr. Adams isn't really Mr. Adams. He's Mr. Abrams," she says matter-of-factly, as if to say that this business of having an assumed name is all very common to her.

(Briefly, Santana wonders if what Brittany says is true. Abrams is a Jewish name.)

"My father couldn't acknowledge me," Santana admits. "I can't pass for anything good," she says, surprised to hear herself add a sad laugh to what she meant as a joke at her own expense. "I never knew until he died. I never knew about any of this. Things were happy at the bachelor cottage. I never knew I was—"

Her voice trails away. She finds herself mourning her father and the Friday afternoons when he would bring her books from the Grolier Club library and sometimes a sweet from the corner store if she had minded her manners for Abuela all week.

When she was younger, Santana would run to meet her father at the garden gate, and he would catch her up, speaking to her the English that her grandmother could only scarcely understand but which was Santana's first and best tongue and the language of the stories she loved hearing her father read to her in his deep, rich voice. He would listen to Santana's progress at her piano lessons and adore her and Abuela's little retellings of their idyll days.

Since her father's death, no one has listened to Santana at all until Brittany.

"So when your daddy died, Puck brought you here?" Brittany infers.

Santana can only nod in reply.

(She feels a pang.)

Brittany gives Santana another long look. Though Santana can't be certain, it seems that Brittany notices the sadness in her. Brittany's face turns soft, her voice sweet but just as sure as ever.

"I'm glad to meet you, Santana."

Santana had never liked her name until she heard Brittany say it.

(Having Brittany call her name pretty doesn't hurt anything, either.)

Even after just meeting her, Santana can already tell that Brittany doesn't talk in the same way that anyone else talks; she has this way of making everything sound so easy. Santana's name isn't easy for most people, but for Brittany, it is. Without thinking about it, Santana smiles again, feeling something light inside of her. Brittany smiles back.

* * *

><p>For a while, Brittany and Santana lapse into silence but not silence of the usual kind; it doesn't feel at all empty but rather furnished with a warm awareness, with Brittany and Santana watching each other work, becoming familiar with the small, clever motions of each other's hands as they tease seams apart and make cuts along the borders of the clothes.<p>

They become clockwork, with Brittany cutting the skirts and then passing them to Santana to sew until Brittany has no more cuts to make, at which point she joins Santana in sewing, both of them set with needles from the kit and slinging little smiles to each other from across the way.

Santana doesn't feel as though she has to say anything to keep Brittany's interest. Even in the quiet, Brittany makes Santana feel like the most interesting person in the world.

After they finish a few skirts, Brittany's looks grow longer, more intense. At first, Santana only feels the change, but then she allows herself to catch Brittany's eyes to find the moon gold in the blue. When she does, Brittany's ears pink, and Brittany stops stitching.

Brittany laughs at herself again, like she did when she first sat down with Santana, only this time, she allows herself to use her voice. Santana has never heard a prettier laugh, light and tinged with gold, like everything else about Brittany so far.

She finds herself laughing because Brittany is laughing, though nothing seems especially funny.

"What?" she says, her face lifting into her widest smile. She feels something purr inside her, welcome.

"You're really good at that," Brittany answers, as artless as when she complimented Santana's name.

"My grandmother taught me," Santana stumbles, feeling gladder than she has in weeks. Her face heats, and she looks away. "Thank you for helping me," she says suddenly, grateful to Brittany in more ways than she can explain.

"If you're not careful, Mrs. Schuester might try to take you for one of her seamstresses and keep you out of the show," Brittany warns teasingly.

Santana shrugs, biting down her grin. "I don't think Mrs. Schuester likes me very much."

"Really?" Brittany says, genuinely confused. "Has she met you?"

Santana laughs again and nods. "Yesterday, I mistook her for Ma Jones."

Brittany seems impressed. She purses her lips and nods, serious, considering Santana's admission in the same way that an old businessman might consider news about changing stock prices on Wall Street. After a few seconds, she mock frowns. "I do that all the time, too," she says and both she and Santana cut up.

The girls make it through two more skirts while mostly just talking about the hemming but also testing each other with little jokes and complimenting each other as it strikes them to do so—which, as it turns out, is often.

Eventually, Santana reaches for the last skirt on the pile, and Brittany says, "Now don't get scared, darlin', but someone's watching us and has been for a few minutes."

Santana's eyes widen and she searches about her, frantic, not liking the idea that someone would spy on her one bit, and especially not when she just told so many secrets to Brittany. She hopes that the eavesdropper is only Puck, come to check up on her before lunch.

Brittany speaks in a raised voice. "No use hiding, miss! I see your shadow on the ground!"

It's not Puck, then.

Santana turns just in time to see someone step from behind the corner of the big tent out of the sun into shadow: a girl, probably the same age as Santana and Brittany, the kind of beautiful that reminds Santana of the heroines in Russian romances, with a fair complexion and tragic features, a small self-sadness hidden in the pout of her angel mouth and just visible at the corners of her eyes.

The girl wears a Charvet shirtwaist with a black bow tied round her neck. She also sports a narrow, gored skirt, her hair gathered in a neat bun, a straw boater hat on her head, her whole outfit fine and of the latest fashion. She watches Brittany and Santana at first with a curious expression, but as she draws up closer to them, her face turns guarded.

She has the prettiest hazel eyes that Santana has ever seen.

Santana glances over to check Brittany's reaction to the girl and finds Brittany frowning, as if she can't understand why the girl would spy on them. Before the girl can say anything to explain herself, Brittany speaks.

"You're Mr. Fabray's daughter," she says, and, even though she addresses the girl, it sounds as if she means mostly to identify the girl to Santana. She seems very surprised to see the Fabray girl in this setting.

The girl ignores Brittany's incredulity and puts on a haughty face.

"Quinn Fabray, correspondent. How do you do?"

She extends a hand to Brittany like a gentleman might do when he encounters a fraternity brother at the club. Her voice comes out throaty, almost hoarse, and not at all like what Santana might expect a girl such as her to sound like. She talks with a slight edge, her words mostly honey but with a hint of something more acidic underlying them.

Brittany looks confused. She ignores Quinn's proffered handshake.

"I thought your name was Lucy."

Quinn's face falls, all her haughtiness vanished in an instant. She lowers her hand. "Well, that's my given name," she explains hurriedly. "But, professionally, I go by Quinn."

It's then Santana notices that Quinn carries a small writing ledger and a pencil in her hands. Apparently, Brittany notices the items, too. Brittany's eyes flick between Quinn, Santana, and the ledger.

"Were you writing about us?" she asks in a small voice.

For a second, Quinn looks absolutely caught and so embarrassed that Santana would almost feel sorry for her if not for her recent spying, but then Quinn's face changes, regaining some of its haughtiness.

"I'm on investigative assignment," she says proudly. "I'm working on a newspaper article detailing the intricacies of circus life for the Associated Press."

Quinn speaks with such certainty that Santana finds it hard to question her, but, at the same time, Santana can't imagine that what Quinn says could be true. Quinn can no more correspond with the A.P. than Santana can attend one of President McKinley's state dinners in Washington D.C. as a guest. She isn't Nellie Bly. Santana wonders if Quinn means to have a laugh or if she's just aping at being a correspondent for the sake of playing a game.

"I thought you were here because your daddy might buy half the circus from Mr. Adams," Brittany says bluntly, furrowing her brow at Quinn.

Quinn rolls her eyes. "Well, yes," she says, the edge in her voice growing sharper. "Ostensibly, I came here with my father so that he could negotiate a business arrangement with Mr. Adams, but since I'm here anyhow, I've decided to take the opportunity to make a report. No correspondent worth her dispatch would pass up such a rare and bona fide opportunity as this one."

"And you really write for the newspaper?" Brittany asks, face still hard with disbelief.

Quinn makes a scoffing noise but again looks caught. Her eyes dart between Brittany and the tents. Santana can tell that Quinn didn't expect Brittany to question her story quite so much. The whole interaction makes Santana feel uncomfortable; she doesn't know what Quinn means to play at here.

"Well, yes," Quinn says frantically. "I mean, I will. I will write for a newspaper."

"How?" Brittany asks and Santana is glad that Brittany says something because Santana wants to know Quinn's answer to that question, too.

There are rules, after all.

"I can write in pseudonymously," Quinn says, almost as if to convince herself more than Brittany and Santana. There's desperation in her words now. "They needn't ever know that I'm... my true identity. The quality of my work will convince them that my story is fit for publication. They'll hire me as a mail correspondent. They'll never even have to see my face. That's why I go by Quinn, you see."

It seems an impossible idea to Santana and she expects Brittany to say something to that effect to Quinn, but Brittany doesn't. Instead, Brittany surprises Santana—and apparently Quinn, too, judging from the look on Quinn's face when Brittany next speaks.

"Won't it bother you if Quinn gets all the credit you deserve?"

Quinn's mouth falls open, and she couldn't look more flabbergasted than if she had just learned that Brittany were her long-lost sister. For a second, her expression opens, and Santana sees self-doubt and a strange sort of frustrated jealousy plain behind Quinn's eyes, but then Quinn quickly closes herself off again, guarding her thoughts.

"I am Quinn," she snaps. "It's my second name. And what harm is there in assuming a name anyway? You know they'd never read my work if they knew that I'm a woman." Her tone softens. "They'll read what Quinn writes, though. And it will be good. They'll publish it."

What Quinn says sounds like a promise to herself more than anything else.

"What can we do for you, then, Miss Fabray?" Brittany asks. She doesn't sound at all afraid of Quinn, even though Quinn snapped. Instead, she sounds genuinely helpful. Something in the kindness of her voice tugs at Santana.

(Santana wonders if this isn't what Puck meant last night when he said that Brittany was strange: that she doesn't comport herself in the way others might do.)

(That she doesn't seem afraid of anyone.)

Quinn acts taken aback but then grateful. She smiles a small, tentative smile. "I would appreciate it if I could interview you," she says in her reedy, squashed voice. "I intend to include the firsthand testimony of as many circus performers as I can in my article, for the sake of authenticity."

"All right," Brittany says simply.

"All right?" Quinn repeats, her small smile blooming into a full one. She seems surprised at Brittany's willingness to oblige her, and pleasantly so. "Right," she says. "Okay." She flips her ledger open and hovers her pencil over the page, flustered to have this opportunity.

(Santana gets the feeling that this is the first real interview that Quinn Fabray has ever conducted.)

"Ready?" Brittany asks, wearing a cat grin, Quinn's flightiness amusing her.

"Yes," Quinn starts. "Okay, so what is your occupation with the circus?" she asks.

"Human not-a-target," Brittany says seriously.

Both Quinn and Santana start, but then Santana gets it: Brittany means what she said as a joke. Santana finds that she adores Brittany's drollness, just the same as she did before, taking equal delight in this riddle in Brittany and in the fact that Brittany has riddles itself. She laughs at Brittany's cleverness and feels something inside herself curl towards Brittany as would a cat into a sunbeam, warm and pleased in every way.

Quinn simply looks bewildered.

Still laughing, Santana answers, "Gypsy fortuneteller."

The mood of the conversation changes as soon as Santana speaks, as if a cloud has just floated in front of the sun, shading what was a sunny day all of a sudden. Quinn glares at Santana, and, in an instant, Santana remembers the rules. It's only then that Santana realizes Quinn only wanted to interview Brittany—that Brittany is the one who counts.

"Excuse me," Quinn says, the edge in her voice sharper than Santana has heard it yet. "I mean to interview Miss—"

She looks to Brittany to supply her surname.

(Vaguely, it occurs to Santana that she has yet to learn Brittany's surname herself.)

"Santana works for the circus, too," Brittany says firmly.

"Well, yes," Quinn splutters, affronted. "I'm sure she does, but I'm really not interested in interviewing..."

Her sentence trails away. Again, she looks to Brittany to supply what she can't say. She clutches her ledger with a sort of desperation. Her pretty mouth hangs slightly ajar, her pretty eyes catch Brittany's. She waits.

Brittany just stares.

(Santana's heart beats at sprint pace in her chest. She waits for Brittany, too.)

"I don't think I want to give an interview anymore," Brittany says finally, in her plain way. She shrugs, "I'm sorry."

(She does sound sorry but not on account of herself.)

Quinn's mouth opens even wider. "I'm—," she starts and then stops again. She makes a scoffing noise, totally shocked.

"I want to help Santana with her hemming," Brittany says quietly. "We have a lot to do."

Quinn finally closes her mouth, suddenly mindful of herself. "I see," she says in a small voice. "I should get going. My father's probably looking for me." She sounds dazed, as though she's speaking without thinking about her words, like her mind is still stuck in the moment when Brittany refused her and hasn't caught up to this moment yet. She looks everywhere but at Brittany and Santana. "I'm...," she starts, but never finishes.

Instead, she just leaves, hurrying away between the tents.

Santana feels almost as shocked as Quinn looked.

She wants to believe that Brittany just sent Quinn Fabray away on her account, but even the thought of such a thing happening seems amazing and unreal. People don't do things like that for each other. People like Brittany don't do things like that for people like Santana. There are rules—hundreds of them—and Brittany just broke nearly every one all at once.

(Santana can't make her heartbeat slow down.)

"I have to go," Brittany says suddenly, looking away from Santana. She sets her needle down on the sewing kit and scrambles to her feet. Her eyes meet Santana's, still perfect inimitable blue. Santana can't read her expression. Brittany says, "Thank you, Santana."

She sounds like she really means it, though Santana can't imagine what reason Brittany would have to thank her at all.

And with that, Brittany departs just as suddenly as she arrived.

(Her thanks lingers with Santana.)

(Santana thinks it's because she's surprised.)

* * *

><p>It takes Santana another quarter hour to finish hemming the last skirt. As she works, the sun stretches the shadows longer but thinner over her; all she thinks about is Brittany.<p>

Santana has never felt so intensely curious about any one person before in her life. She finds herself replaying her every instant of conversation with Brittany, reflecting on what Brittany meant by this little word and that little smile. Santana feels a great excitement, all for Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, but also a great wonderment.

(Why did Brittany have to go?)

With her hemming job completed, Santana returns to the mess pit. As she enters the kitchen area, some of Ma's girls glare at her, and Santana suddenly remembers the events of the morning for the first time since Brittany sat down with her by the tents. She looks straight ahead, purposefully avoiding the kitchen girls' eyes, but shame still colors her cheeks. Though she tries not to, Santana can't help but recall how she chastised the girls and said things to them that aren't even half true.

(Santana can no more come and go as she pleases in this camp than she can hop a train back to New York and live in the bachelor cottage again.)

She feels like the biggest fool in the world.

"Samuel Evans, I told you to stay out of my kitchen before the lunch bell or I would swat your clown behind with a spoon!" Ma Jones thunders, stepping out from behind the chuck wagon with her wooden spoon brandished. She seems to have mistaken Santana for Sam. When she realizes her mistake, she lowers her spoon. "Oh, it's you," she says, disappointed.

"I finished the sewing," Santana offers before Ma can find something to yell at her about. She holds up the skirts in her arms for Ma to examine.

"You finished it all?" Ma asks, clearly surprised. "All by yourself?"

Santana shakes her head, honest. "No," she says. "Brittany helped me."

(Santana feels a thrill, saying Brittany's name.)

For a second, Ma looks confused, and Santana wonders if Ma doesn't know who Brittany is, despite Brittany's statement that she knows almost everyone in the camp. Santana thinks of clarifying that Brittany is the knife thrower's daughter, but then Ma speaks again.

"Brittany Pierce helped you with the sewing?" she repeats, as if she somehow misheard Santana the first time.

Suddenly, Santana feels nervous. Maybe she's broken a rule without knowing it by accepting Brittany's help.

"Yes," she says, shrinking down before Ma.

(She hopes more than anything that Ma won't get her into trouble.)

For the second time today, an unreadable expression passes over Ma's face as she stares at Santana, searching her. Santana doesn't know if Ma finds what she wants to find. Maybe she does because, in the next second, she jogs back to attention, determination and vigor returning to her eyes.

"All right," she says sternly. "Get them skirts to Mrs. Schuester and hurry up and change out of your costume before lunch. You won't be performing at the matinee anyway, being new and all, so you best be in plainclothes so as not to confuse the patrons. Hurry up before the lunch bell! Get outta here! Shoo!"

She pushes Santana in the direction of the dressing tents, the peaks of which Santana can see rising from behind the billboards separating the camp from the circus grounds proper. Santana scurries along, eager to get away from Ma, lest she somehow offend her.

As she goes, Santana wonders about Brittany even more than she did before.

* * *

><p>The path from the mess pit to the dressing tents is actually something of a straight shot, so Santana doesn't find any trouble in making her way to her destination.<p>

By now, the sun shines high in the sky, and Santana figures it must be nearly noon. The air almost hums with humidity, fat with sluggish heat around her, and a faint slick of sweat forms on her brow beneath her hairline, at the back of her neck under her hair, and on her arms where she carries the thick riding skirts. She squints against the June brightness and feels increasingly thirsty; she hopes that lunch comes soon.

The camp isn't nearly as crowded or busy now as it was in the rush of the morning; with the tents erected and the white city in working order, Santana supposes that most of the workers and performers have tucked themselves away to wait for lunch and for the afternoon show.

After dropping the finished skirts off at the dressing tent with some of Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses, Santana finds her way back to her and Puck's tent using the flag at the crest of the big top as her guide marker. She discovers the tent unoccupied, Puck nowhere around. Knowing that he could return at any moment, she scrambles to change out of her costume and into her plainclothes, covering herself quickly so as to avoid having Puck find her in even the slightest state of undress.

In the hot, thick air inside the tent, Santana's blouse clings to her skin and her hair sticks to the back of her neck. Almost immediately, the lace flourishes at her wrists and collar itch. Though she could have never admitted as much to her grandmother, Santana misses having her shoulders bared and would trade out her modest clothing for her costume in a trice if it weren't for Ma's admonition that she oughtn't to wear her gypsy dress to the matinee.

As if she had somehow summoned him by thinking his name, Puck shows up outside the tent just as Santana emerges from it. Though he's still dressed in his costume, he wears his usual black hat on his head. The juxtaposition between outfit and headwear somehow comes across as funny to Santana, but Puck doesn't seem fussed about wearing something so striking with something so mundane.

He greets Santana with his idiot smile. "Hey, ladybird! There you are!" He brushes his fingers across her elbow when he flanks her. "Sorry I didn't find you sooner," he apologizes.

"It's all right," she says genuinely.

(She hopes that maybe he'll ask her about how she spent her morning, but he doesn't.)

(Santana wants more chances to try out Brittany's name on her lips.)

"Well, after we fixed up the pens, Mr. Adams asked me and Finn to drive him and Mr. Fabray into town to their hotel for lunch. Finn stayed to give 'em a ride back to camp for the show, and he kept the cart, so I had to walk," Puck explains, as to legitimate his apology.

Hearing Puck mention Mr. Fabray, Santana takes the opportunity to pose him a question. "Who is Mr. Fabray?" she asks, allowing Puck to link their arms together and start leading her away from their tent, back in the direction of the mess pit.

Puck lowers the brim of his hat further over his eyes, his face falling into shadowed relief. He looks somber when he answers, "Businessman. Tycoon. Owns a chunk of railroad between Ohio and Illinois. Mr. Adams wants to invite him on as a partner in owning the circus."

Santana can't help but notice that Puck sounds disappointed. "Well, isn't that a good thing?" she asks, uncertain as to why Puck seems to disapprove of Mr. Fabray so much.

"Maybe," Puck says, a note of bitterness in his voice. He sighs. "Things are changing, ladybird. Going's been rough for us for a while. Mr. Adams ain't P.T. Barnum, and our outfit ain't as big as some of the rail circuses out east. Mr. Adams feels like he can't afford to keep things up all by his lonesome, so he wants to bring in somebody who'll help him finance the show. Mr. Fabray sure has the money to throw into the outfit, but he's no showman. He'll want us to become a seven ring'er."

"How many rings does the circus have now?" Santana asks, curious.

"We have three, show one at a time," says Puck.

"Well, wouldn't seven be better?" Santana returns, failing to see the problem with wanting to expand the circus to include more spectacles.

Puck turns Santana, steering her down the last main aisle toward the mess pit. He shakes his head firmly. "It's bigger, sure," he says. "But bigger isn't what matters. When there's seven rings, things get sloppy. It cuts down on the showmanship and theatricality. Three rings is high art, but seven? Kitsch."

Though he spits the last word like it's dirty, he somehow sounds more sad than angry. Santana had never realized that Puck cared about the circus so much. Honestly, she hadn't realized that Puck cared about much of anything at all. She finds herself a little bit in awe of this new Puck but also disconcerted to know that he exists.

(It makes things easier to believe that Puck simply has a shallow heart.)

"So that's why Mr. Fabray is here?" she asks. "To buy half the circus?"

Puck nods just as they arrive at the mess pit. "It's not a done deal yet. Mr. Fabray wants to make sure that he's making a profitable investment before he ponies up anything. Mr. Adams keeps trying to impress him, giving him the ol' wine and dine. He hopes they'll reach an agreement soon."

The mess bell rings loudly overhead, distracting Puck from the conversation. Santana mulls everything Puck said.

She hadn't realized that the circus might be dying just at the time when she fixed to join it.

* * *

><p>Ma Jones serves the company a lunch of fried sausage and potatoes, a dish Santana had never tried before today. Santana's stomach has settled since breakfast, and she finds herself hungry enough to eat her whole serving, though she isn't accustomed to the fare.<p>

While she eats, Santana scans the company for Brittany, but, strangely, finds Brittany nowhere amidst the crowd. After a while, even Puck seems to notice Santana's preoccupation.

"You have somewhere to be, ladybird?" he teases, mistaking her searching for a longing to leave.

(Yes.)

Santana mumbles something about wanting another drink of water, and Puck obliges her, taking her cup to refill it. Santana spots Sam, the trilby tramp clown, Mrs. Schuester, and the Flying Dragon Changs, but she doesn't see Brittany anywhere. She wonders if Brittany decided to skip lunch.

(Santana has never missed someone she only just met before now.)

This meal goes as quickly as did breakfast, with everyone eating and dispersing in under a half hour, running off to change into costumes, touch up face paint, and set themselves in position for what Puck calls the "morning fair."

Before she leaves the mess pit along with Puck, Ken stops Santana.

"You'll need these, little missus," he says, handing Santana two small paper tickets, one for the fair and the other for the matinee performance. "Stay out of the way of the paying patrons," he instructs her gruffly, holding a warning finger up in front of her face. "Try to keep out of the way and keep quiet, you hear?"

Santana nods her consent. Satisfied with her deference, Ken releases Santana to Puck's care, muttering as Puck and Santana walk away about ticket sales and gypsies. Santana tries her best not to hear Ken and actually finds it easy to tune him out once she gives herself over to thinking about Brittany again.

(She wonders what the knife thrower's daughter does during the morning fair.)

* * *

><p>Puck abandons Santana to prepare his fire eating act for the fair, leaving her at the edge of the midway. Though Santana has walked this side of the camp before on her way to and from the ladies' dressing tent, she has never seen the midway on full display until now.<p>

A row of large nonresidential tents and booths stands on either side of a long pitch adjacent to the big top, all leading up to the spacious rectangular sideshow tent at the end of the lane. Conversely, exuberant signs point the way to the menagerie, located beside the big top on the opposite end of the pitch from the sideshow.

Various performers stand outside the tents and booths, shouting the nature of their attractions to the patrons, who come in droves, most of them still dressed in church clothes, with parents minding their children, youths squirreling about with their friends, and couples strolling in promenade all up and down the way. Shouts and squeals fill the air, along with laughter, music, and the squalling of animals.

Santana has never seen so many people in one place at a time, and neither has she seen such a wide collection of variegated and unusual sights located in a single locality. She feels as though she's stepped into a scene from _The Travels of Marco Polo_. The colors and marvels steal her breath, each one stranger and more fantastical than the next.

As she walks, Santana attracts the attention of some of the other patrons along the midway, who stare at her eyes, lips, and hair, clearly disgruntled to see an unlike like Santana amidst all of the likes like them. Santana feels as if she ought to apologize for just being, but she doesn't know where she would even start. She searches for Brittany in the crowd, desperate to find _special_ instead of _different_, but if Brittany attends the morning fair, Santana never does manage see her.

Inside the menagerie tent, Santana encounters a corralled herd of zebras with stripes that run like fault lines along their rumps and sides. They hinny and whistle, emitting weird high-pitched yelps that sound nothing like the deep, gruff snuffs of horses. The spotted asses in the pen across from the zebras bray in reply to them, speaking a different language but one no less strange. The whole enclosure smells of dusty, processed grass.

Further down the way, serpents writhe, some caged in glass, others contorting over the limbs of their smirking, enraptured handlers. Santana can't help but squirm watching the pythons and constrictors weave their diamond heads this way and that, testing the air with thirsty tongues, checking the world through ghostly brown and yellow eyes.

Amidst more obvious novelties, such as a two-headed tortoise and a great, fat bullfrog in a glass tank labeled "Dan'l Webster of Calaveras County," Santana observes the big jungle cats: three hearty African lions and a Bengal tiger lounging in an iron-barred cage at the end of the menagerie. Though none of the cats seems especially active, all four of them wear thick shackles about their hocks, chaining them to their pen.

(Santana feels a pang.)

A young man sits on a three-legged stool inside the cage, showing no fear, even though wild beasts surround him. Santana thinks she recognizes the man from around camp: he has a compact build and a smug face. He keeps his long, light hair slicked back on his head and wears a dashing red military jacket with gold flourishes up the front, along with immaculately polished heeled boots.

The man sits with his hands folded in his lap, leaning back against the bars of the cage, his posture both lazy and careless. He smirks as if the people gaping at him from through the bars interest him far more than the lions and tiger sitting within snapping distance of his person. A leather switch leans idly against his stool, untouched.

A sign next to the exhibit identifies him as JESSE ST. JAMES, LION TAMER.

"That's right," Jesse addresses the crowd, voice perfectly bored and perfectly pompous. "Step right up and observe the kings of all bestiary, passive as kittens! You needn't swoon, madam! I assure you that I am in no danger. These savages depend on me for their very lives and would sooner perish than harm their master, you see." To emphasize his point, Jesse pets the head of one of the gangly, petulant lionesses lying at his side. "I can sleep at the sides of the brutes, given away into dreaming, without having any fear that they might mistreat me. I've tamed them down to nothing. They fear me more than I do them."

When the big male lion with his raucous mane opens his mouth to yawn, obviously uncomfortable in the heat, some of the women situated around Santana shriek, but Santana doesn't flinch at all or even really notice the size of the lion's teeth; instead, her eyes stay fixed on the shackles around the cats' feet. She feels tightness in her chest.

(Something almost like fear, but she can't say what.)

Back outside on the open midway, Santana feels like she can breathe again. Immediately, she searches for Brittany, but fails to find her for a second time. Santana shakes the images of the lions from her mind and sets off down the midway, passing by a young sweet-faced juggler tossing colored wooden rings to the delight of several families with small children, as well as a handful of confection vendors passing out popcorn and taffies to young sweethearts. Santana eventually comes to a stop outside a tall open-faced tent with a marquee over the lintel.

THE AMAZING HIRAM OF PRAGUE, MASTER OF THE ARCANE ARTS.

A crowd of nearly thirty people gathers around the tent. When Santana joins their number, she finds she must stand on her tiptoes in order to see over their shoulders. She has to work to get a good view of the act in the tent, but once she sees it, she gasps.

Rachel Berry stands atop a table, lowering herself into a box with help from a yellow-skinned quadroon. The quadroon holds one of Rachel's hands clasped in his while his other hand supports the small of her back as he guides her into what looks like a long and very gaudy coffin. Rachel wears a glossy, intricate corset the color of absinthe with pretty purple bows laced up the sides, along with a gossamer skirt like a ballerina's; her hair hangs in soft ringlets around her face. She smiles her widest, most patronizing smile, waving to the crowd.

The quadroon dons the kind of costume about which Santana has read in Kipling, a mishmash of bright colors and floral cambric, with yellows, greens, and indigo blues singing boldly from his long tunic, loose leggings, and little funny-shaped hat. The quadroon waits dotingly on Rachel, making certain that she fits comfortably inside the box and brushing back any stray locks of her hair that hang over the edges when Rachel lies flat. She appears totally at ease with him.

In front of the table stands the man that Santana can only suppose must be the Amazing Hiram, Rachel's father, the famous illusionist from Prague, about whom Rachel told Santana so much just this morning on the train.

Like Rachel, Hiram has a swarthy complexion, sharp European features, and dark eyes. Like the quadroon, his hair is a salty gray. He wears round spectacles and a fine tailored suit with a handsome black frock coat. A gold pocket watch chain dangles from the pocket of his jacket. His face and brow have a severe aspect about them. He seems hawkish and astute, as if he must see everything.

Hiram speaks with a low voice and polished, European accent.

(Briefly, Santana wonders if his accent is genuine or feigned for the stage, like hers.)

"As you can see, ladies and gentleman, the box is totally sound and impenetrable."

He holds up a large padlock to the audience for them to observe just as the quadroon closes the lid to the box over Rachel, hiding her from view. Santana gasps at the quadroon's actions, startled, but no one else around her seems to flinch; she supposes that Hiram must have explained the logistics of his trick to the audience prior to commencing it.

"The locks," he says, giving the padlock a shake, "are sure and in fine working order. If you would care to examine them, good sir"—he passes the item forward to a man in the front row of the audience whom Santana can't see from where she stands—"and verify to everyone that they are indeed of the standard manufacture"—the man must nod because Hiram continues—"then I shall place them on the box, sealing my young assistant inside."

He glides over to the table and, with a magnificent flourish, latches the padlock onto a handle attaching the box to its lid. He smiles and wheels, moving to the other side of the stage, the quadroon following after him with fleet steps.

As part of the motion, Hiram leans down, whispering last minute instructions to his man, pressing his face so close to the quadroon's ear that it almost seems as if he'll kiss him. The quadroon smiles at Hiram, fond and attentive, as if they have a private joke together, and then rushes to the back of the stage behind the table. When he returns to the fore of the tent, he carries a black, lacquered box with him, which he offers to Hiram with a slight bow.

From the lacquered box, Hiram produces a large, showy gold key. He whirls back in front of the table.

"Ladies and gentleman," he announces, setting the key in the padlock and turning it, "I give you magic!"

He throws open the box lid and a two white doves erupt from the box, flitting up to the rafters of the tent in a flurry of feathers and excited coos. They alight atop a beam of the tent and take roost as the crowd roars with delight. Hiram and the quadroon tip the box forward at an angle so that the audience can see inside it. The box clearly contains no Rachel, and, moreover, appears totally solid, with no visible trap openings or secret compartments of which to speak.

The men and women gathered outside the tent applaud loudly; both Hiram and the quadroon appear pleased with their success. They smile at one another, eyes soft, and clasp hands, bowing in unison to yet more applause.

(Santana forgets to clap her hands. She has no idea what she's just seen.)

Knowing that her time on the midway draws short, Santana hurries towards the sideshow tent, eager to see the freaks and wonders promised on its billboard before the matinee show begins. On her way, she passes by the Flying Dragon Changs performing somersaults on the grass and dodges Puck toward the end of the pitch waving a lighted torch around his head.

Upon reaching her destination, she finds the tent dimly lighted and populated mostly by adolescents and bachelors, with each new exhibit cordoned into fabric stalls, arranged not dissimilarly to the cages in the menagerie.

In the first stall, Santana observes the Bearded Lady, who wears a pretty saloon dress and holds a feathered fan as she sits atop a stool, gazing out impassively past the people watching her. She's tall and built like a stevedore. From this distance, her beard looks real, though Santana can't imagine that it is real, considering that she saw the Bearded Lady entirely clean-faced yesterday.

(The Bearded Lady looks circus-lonely. Her eyes are small and sad.)

Beyond the Bearded Lady, Santana finds the Bearded Lady's friend, the round lady, billed as "the Famed Giantess of Akron," as well as a man who seems to think he's a dog, a family of little people sitting down to tea at a tiny table, and a man without feet who chats happily with the people who come to gape at him.

Along with the live acts, Santana finds curio items on display throughout the tent, including a shrunken head from Borneo, the exoskeleton of a giant tarantula the size of a cat preserved in a Mason jar, and something that a sign identifies as "Real Mermaid Remains!" that seems more like the dried-out amalgamation a monkey and a fish than the kind of pretty sirens that one would encounter in Wagner.

Santana finds that she dislikes the sideshow not so much because it spooks her but because it makes her regret something without knowing what that something is.

Just as Santana steps back outside into the light, she hears the toll of a bell signaling the start of the matinee show; she hurries to join the queue headed into the big top.

(She's never even seen the circus before.)

* * *

><p>After the ushers deal with her, Santana finds herself seated on one of the topmost benches in the big top surrounded by other unlikes like her, while the likes occupy the good seats closer to the floor.<p>

Hot air rises, and so Santana swelters in the upper reaches of the tent, sweating under her skirt and blouse, her face flushed and damp with sweaty sheen. The other circus patrons seated around her appear equally miserable, but none of them complains. Instead, they fan themselves with handkerchiefs and folded programs. Some of them shoot furtive looks at Santana; she doesn't belong here anymore than she belonged on the midway.

The circus begins with a flare of music, just like one of the chariot races depicted in Mr. Wallace's _Ben Hur_. The band plays Sousa and then another march Santana doesn't recognize. Her eyes grow large as she watches the same elephants she met this morning in the parade troop into the tent, no longer wearing simple halters but magnificent plumed headdresses, embroidered blankets, and bells wrapped around their great tree trunk limbs, looking more majestic than anything Santana has ever seen before.

As a single vested driver leads the elephants around the main ring in a circle, the great beasts clinging to each other's rope tails in a line by only the nubby tips of their trunks, a cartel of clowns erupts from behind a back curtain, somersaulting and tripping into the spotlights. Santana spots Sam and the trilby tramp, along with another blonde-haired clown whom she supposes must be Mr. Evans, in addition to about a dozen other clowns, all varying in age and makeup.

The clowns jostle each other and trip over the ring. They juggle balls and pull comic faces at the audience. Santana keeps her eyes trained to Sam because he's the only clown she knows by name. She watches with interest as he attempts to join several of the other clowns at playing a game of clown baseball using a bat much too short to meet any pitch and a miniature baseball only barely big enough for Santana to see it when the clown pitcher holds the ball up to show the audience.

Sam continually taps on the shoulder of the clown third base coach, taking several minutes to win his attention. Once the fellow finally looks at Sam, Sam pantomimes that he would like to join the team at bat, but the base coach takes Sam roughly by the shoulders, stretching out Sam's ratty suit, and steers him away from the baseline, spinning him around and pushing his head down so that Sam stands with his rear end up in the air. With an exaggerated wind-up, the base coach gives Sam a sharp stage kick in the behind with one of his giant, oversized shoes, and Sam jumps, grabbing his bottom in mock pain, scurrying away.

Though Sam wears sad face paint and just took a mock licking as part of the show, he smiles from ear to ear, dopey and carefree as he runs about the baseball diamond to try and join the other team. Santana can tell that Sam is supposed to act sad—and especially after the clown umpire tosses him out of the game—but he looks practically giddy, his wide, lippy grin incongruent with his teary makeup. She laughs at his antics for all the wrong reasons, amused at the sad clown who can't help but smile.

When the clowns finish their baseball sketch—Sam never did get the chance to join—the lights focus in on the curtain behind the main ring and the band plays a drum roll that mounts in intensity for nearly a full minute before a man clothed in a fine red frock coat and a top hat emerges into the center ring at a run. From so far away, Santana finds it difficult to make out the man's features, aside from his rectangular face and strong chin. The man doffs his hat and bows deeply to the crowd, revealing a head of curly, blonde hair. He's older than Puck but younger than Mr. Adams. He smiles at the audience and resituates his hat on his head.

"Ladies and gentleman, children young and old, welcome to the most magnificent spectacle between this nation's two fair oceans! My name is Mr. William Schuester, and I'll be your host this evening for the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie! Prepare yourselves to experience thrills the likes of which you've never imagined! Today, the very best artists in the world have come prepared to astound and amuse you with their antics, pluck, charisma, and even their willingness to defy death! You'll see both man and beast perform feats of strength, skill, and pageantry! Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!"

The big top erupts with thunderous applause as William the Ringmaster steps back, gesturing towards the plethora of performers pouring into the three rings from behind the curtain.

"I give you a radiant panorama of regal magnificence!" William shouts over the roars of the crowd and the noise of the circus in full gambol. "Allow me to introduce you to the most talented company of the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus!"

Santana can scarcely appreciate the full kaleidoscope brilliance of the sight.

There are too many performers to watch, too many animals, too many colors, too much movement, and too much sound. The equestrienne unit takes their ponies at a gallop around the rings, darting in flashes of bold red. The clowns caper alongside the elephants, motley in rainbow hue. Acrobats, including the Flying Dragon Changs, flip and cartwheel through the center of the rings like blue-clad shooting stars. Jugglers toss pins and balls in the air, dressed in smart silvers and glistening gold.

Santana spots Puck and Rachel Berry in the ring farthest from her and fixates on them; Rachel twirls lighted batons around her, still clothed in her pretty green corset, flames licking close to her body and painting the air around her in serpent streaks of orange and white. Puck whirls into the fore of the ring, kicking and spinning with a double-ended flaming staff circling about him in orbit. He moves more boldly than Rachel does, looking almost reckless. Even from far away, Santana can tell he wears his devilish smirk, pleased as the crowd reacts with shocked _oohs_ to his fearless abandon.

It's his first show back since his accident.

For an instant, Santana feels certain that Puck sees her—he looks up in the stands at the spot where she sits—and especially once his devilish smirk grows even more dangerous. He grins, dark and devious, and draws one end of his staff up to his mouth before breathing in a torrent of flame. Santana gasps as the fire snakes past Puck's lips into his open mouth, and she lets out a stifled shriek when he blows the fire back into the air in a great flare, as if he's Redcrosse's dragon in Spenser.

Santana can't help but wonder how it is that Puck shows no fear of fire, considering how badly he burnt himself before. If Santana were him, she would have never wanted to handle fire again, let alone to eat it—but, then again, Santana supposes that there are a great deal many things that make her different from Puck.

For the duration of one full song from the band, the full circus regales the audience, with nearly two-hundred performers and as many animals running here and there across the rings, performing tricks to the delight and great entertainment of the audience. Santana finds herself holding her breath, so caught up in the beautiful commotion that it shocks her when it happens.

She finds Brittany.

In a sea of turbulent color, Brittany stands clothed in white, tatty blue sundress gone in favor of a short chemise, matching hose, and what look to Santana like ballet slippers. The brightness of Brittany's costume brings out the gold sun tones in Brittany's countenance; Brittany's hair shines like finely polished jewelry and her lips seem a darker shade of primrose than they did this morning. Santana catches her breath again, almost dizzy.

Before she realizes what she's doing, Santana stands up from her seat to give Brittany a private ovation, carried by a surge of giddy excitement, clapping so hard that her palms buzz from the percussion. She watches Brittany strike a pose, raising a leg all the way up in the air, pressed against her body, other foot planted firmly on the ground. Brittany remains perfectly balanced, pointing her toe toward the peak of the big top. Santana claps even more wildly, breathless as if she had just run a race, her excitement catching in her throat.

With her full attention on Brittany, Santana scarcely notices it when the music changes—that is, until Brittany darts out of the center ring along with the rest of the company, leaving William the Ringmaster alone once more under the lights.

"Kindly direct your attention to the high wire to witness the intrepid aerial experimentation of the Flying Dragon Changs of Peking, the most skillful equilibrists and trapeze artistes of the Orient, who will astound you as they defy the very principles of physics!"

The lights sweep from William on the floor to the rafters of the tent, where Santana notes the presence of two facing platforms with a series of ropes and swings hanging between them. Ladders lead up to the platforms, which stand nearly fifty feet in height. Santana recognizes the Flying Dragon Changs, the man on the left platform, the woman on the right, along with another girl, slightly younger than Santana herself, whom Santana hasn't seen before, also of Chinese descent. The trio wears what Santana assumes must be Chinese costumes, brilliant blue and ornately patterned, though also svelte and streamlined. At William's introduction, they wave to the crowd.

In truth, Santana can barely bring herself to watch the Changs—not after the man grabs the swing closest to his platform and takes a great leap out into space, sitting across the swing bar with nothing between him and the ground fifty feet below but open air and the whispered prayers of everyone in the audience. Though Santana doesn't know the man by anything more than his looks, she couldn't stand it if she were to see him fall. He rocks back and forth, gaining momentum until his swing sways in a steady rhythm.

Apparently, the women take this motion as their cue, and the one who Puck says is either the man's wife or his sister seizes a swing of her own and swings out over the expanse, holding her bar by her hands, rather than sitting on it. Her body lilts, the band playing music in time to her artful tumble. Santana feels a lurch in her stomach as the woman releases her grip on the trapeze, somersaulting into the air, suspended for a full second without anything to uphold her. Before she can stop herself, Santana covers her eyes with her hands.

She can't watch.

Santana listens to the crowd draw a collective gasp and then let out an _aww_. She supposes that their reaction must mean that the woman survives and sneaks a peek just in time to see the man clasping the woman by the forearms as she rocks like a pendulum below him, him turned upside-down, holding onto his bar solely by the strength in his legs.

Santana feels another lurch in her stomach as she watches the man toss the woman back toward her original swing, the woman twisting in the air like a flying maple star spinning as it hits the wind. The woman catches the bar, and Santana's stomach flips. At the height of her upswing, the woman's feet find her platform again; the other female acrobat welcomes her back to safety.

Santana spends the whole of the Flying Dragon Changs' performance in a state of discomfiture, never quite assured that they'll survive all their stunts, despite mounting evidence of their proficiency. She gasps and applauds, caught up in the collective anxiety of the crowd.

When William reappears in the main ring, Santana feels grateful, but even after the Changs' performance meets its official end, it takes several minutes before her breathing returns to its usual pace.

William begins to introduce an equestrienne act, only to have the clowns interrupt him as they come pouring back into the big top, appearing almost from nowhere, with the clown that Santana suspects is Mr. Evans stealing William's hat from behind him and trying to make off with it while William shouts the most ridiculous abuse at him.

In the meanwhile, the other clowns begin to make mischief around the ring, climbing up onto podiums clearly meant as animal perches and trying to stack themselves onto one another's shoulders to form a human ladder to reach up to the trapeze swings.

"You come back, you perfidious scoundrel!" William shouts, chasing after Mr. Evans. "I'll have your red nose for a doorknob!"

The audience roars with laughter.

(Santana notices that William's voice sounds tired.)

Once William successfully chases the clowns backstage—threatening them with lickings if they won't behave themselves—he makes a full introduction for the Most Elite and Accomplished Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie of St. Petersburg, who ride into the big top through the flaps on either side of the tent, sitting straight and haughty in their saddles, wearing the skirts that Santana and Brittany helped hem for them this morning.

The girls egg their horses on to walk on their hind legs, leaning flat against the horses' backs, their heads hanging down close the ground. The girls then right themselves, greatly delighting the crowd.

Afterwards, they have their horses trot dressage, stepping prettily around the rings. Some of the girls jump their horses over the same pedestals which the clowns previously commandeered. They move with a great precision, directed about by the woman with the switch, looking smart in their red riding habits.

Santana finds that she greatly admires the coterie, though she knows that they'll never befriend her, no matter how many skirts she sews for them or how long she remains at the circus.

After the equestriennes comes Mr. Jesse St. James the Lion Tamer, of whom William seems especially proud. William boasts to the audience that Mr. St. James is one of the youngest and most accomplished men in his profession and explains that Mr. St. James has trained his animals from cubs, establishing his own methods for taming them to his touch.

Santana frets to see that the lions and tiger must wear chains for their performance, never mind how it frightens her whenever they roar or look towards the audience. She wonders what Jesse St. James would do if one of his beasts were to escape its shackles and take a lunge for the patrons. She feels glad, at least for the moment, that she sits at the top of the stands and not closer to the action.

Jesse sticks his whole head in his tiger's mouth and has his lions prance atop great rubber balls, rolling them with their mighty paws. The more the audience cheers for him, the more pleased with himself Jesse becomes. When he takes his bow at the end of his act, he looks so smug that Santana can't imagine that his smirk will fade, even after he goes to sleep for the night.

Jugglers, contortionists, a herd of zebras, and the Amazing Hiram—this time sans Rachel's assistance and with only the help of the quadroon—all fill the stage, putting on performances both daring and amusing, before William announces an act that catches Santana's attention even more than the others that she's seen so far.

"Ladies and gentlemen, from the darkest regions of Europe, I present to you a pair of gypsies most skilled in the arts of pyrotechnic artistry! To them, the touch of flame feels as but a friendly caress! They feed upon fire and bathe themselves in brimstone! Don't be alarmed by what you are about to see. Our gypsies are fire-proof! Watch them tame the flames!"

For a second, the lights dim. When they rise again, Santana sees Puck and Rachel in the center of the ring, at first with their backs turned to the crowd. When the band strikes the first quavering note of a song that sounds mysterious and jangling, like coins tinkering in a purse, Puck and Rachel spin to face the crowd, both of them holding instruments already aglow with flame.

While Rachel carries a flail with a ball of fire on the end, Puck handles two short torch staffs, one with both ends lighted, the other with only one end aflame. Rachel prances forward, whirling her flail in slow, steady circles around her head, leaving figure-eights blazing in the air behind her, their ghost heat bold against the dimness of the ring.

For his part, Puck circles Rachel moving much more quickly than she does. Puck kicks himself in cyclone circles, landing in a low stance, legs bent at the knee, almost as if he rides an invisible horse. He spins his torch staffs in his hands, a blur of orange and yellow sparks running ellipticals around his head. He performs gymnastic feats, leaping into bold round-offs and landing with a flourish, and tosses his staffs high into the air, catching them again to the delight of the crowd.

The fire glow paints Puck more devilish than ever; his smirk looks positively evil. He reaches for the lit end of his unevenly lighted staff and slides a handful of flames down the shaft, moving them from one torch to another in one slick motion. The audience gasps, but the fire doesn't seem to burn Puck in the least.

As the frenetic pace of the music picks up, Puck and Rachel approach one another, drawing ever closer, dancing what Santana can only suppose is a gypsy—or maybe Jewish—dance, with Puck kicking up his heels and Rachel rolling her shoulders and hips. She and Puck make concentric circles around one another, twirling their fire implements even faster than before.

The audience shrieks with delight as Rachel's flail comes to within several inches of Puck's face and Puck doesn't flinch or turn away in the slightest. Indeed, as if to prove how little the fire fusses him, Puck traces his own staffs up his legs, the flames licking at his naked calves; several women in the audience scream.

(Santana supposes that that must be the trick that resulted in Puck's injury and brought him into her father's care in the first place.)

Puck and Rachel reach the fore of the ring just as the music strikes a crescendo. In perfect unison, Rachel makes one last impressive, flaunting pass with her flails just as Puck draws his staffs to his face and blows a spate of fire several feet into the air with a mighty puff in the direction of the audience. To a fanfare of shouts and applause, Puck and Rachel quickly douse their instruments in several deep, water-filled buckets lining the peripheries of the ring that Santana hadn't noticed sitting there before.

For a second, the big top turns black, but then the lights pick up again. Puck bows and Rachel curtsies before Puck scampers off the stage towards the backdrop, William the Ringmaster returning to the spotlight in his place. Rachel passes her flails off to a clown who emerges from the edge of the stage and then quickly vanishes again but otherwise stays put, shuffling her slippered feet, as if awaiting something.

"Give it up one more time for our amazing European fire-eating gypsies!" William instructs, offering his own applause in the direction towards which Puck disappeared.

It's then that Rachel seems to catch his eye.

(Santana wonders what Rachel is doing. Is Rachel really so vain that she won't leave the stage, even after her act reaches its natural conclusion?)

"Whoa," says William. "What are you still doing out here, little lady?"

Rachel looks at William adoringly; though Santana can't quite see Rachel's features clearly from this height, she thinks that maybe Rachel bats her eyes. At the very least, Rachel clutches her hands together like a moony sweetheart and draws a circle on the ground with her toe, aping like she wants to butter up William to give her something.

It's only then that Santana realizes that Rachel's behavior is all a continued part of the act and flinches.

She doesn't like feeling tricked.

"Do you need something?" William asks, his acting growing more exaggerated and obviously false.

Rachel gestures in the direction of the audience, pantomiming the action of extending them a gift. She flashes William another dovey look.

"You want to give something to our patrons?" William confirms.

Rachel bounces on the balls of her feet and nods exaggeratedly, wearing a smile so wide that Santana has no trouble seeing it, even from such a great distance. "Well, why didn't you just say so?" William deadpans, and the audience laughs.

"Would you like to sing for them?"

Rachel nods even more enthusiastically than before, even tossing in a little pirouette to show off her excitement.

William faces the audiences, "Well, in that case, ladies and gentlemen, I give you our very own Little Malibran of Seville, trained in the operatic arts by the European masters! Her voice is so clear and pure that she can shatter crystal by its perfect pitch alone! Maestro," Will says, addressing the scruffy band leader sitting at his harmonium on the far end of the stage, "will you kindly accompany our Little Malibran?"

The spotlight momentarily shifts to the band leader seated on his stool. The man nods, looking wearied; the audience doesn't seem to notice his unenthusiasm.

"Excellent!" William cheers. "Let's have some Rossini, if you will! Now, where are my lazy fellows?"

On cue, three clowns, including the trilby tramp, scamper out of the shadows and into the ring, one carrying a stool, another carrying a tall pedestal draped in a blue cloth, and the trilby tramp carrying a crystal wine goblet, which he shows to the audience. The clowns set up the stool sitting directly in front of the pedestal, upon which the trilby tramp ceremoniously places the wine goblet, lampooning like he might drop the glass before he sets it down safely to rest on its perch. All three clowns cavort to the great delight of the crowd.

One of the clowns—a bigger fellow—eyes the arrangement as one might eye a portrait that needs straightening on a wall. At the last moment, he sneaks up behind Rachel and lifts her off of the ground with her arms pinned to her side. Her eyebrows shoot up by her hairline and her mouth drops open, comically wide, as the clown tromps over to the stool, manhandling Rachel all the way, and plunks her down on the seat. The clown smiles, pleased with his addition, and gives the audience a thumbs-up sign. Rachel looks shocked, but then nods her thanks to the clown.

(Santana has to admit: Rachel is quite the talented comedienne.)

"All right," says William, waving his hands at the clowns to dismiss them away as one might shoo horseflies from a picnic. "That's enough, you troublemaking tramps! Off with you, then! Leave our poor little lady alone!"

William waves his hat at the clowns and they scatter, apparently frightened of him. William smiles at the audience.

(He looks just as tired as he sounds.)

"Ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu, I give you the famous Little Malibran of Seville!"

The music starts. Santana can tell that the song lilting through the tent should belong to the piano, not a harmonium, and wrinkles her nose, disgruntled at the shift in instruments, which somehow makes the piece seem maudlin and comical when it should be dramatic and crisp.

But then Rachel starts to sing and suddenly Santana forgets her annoyance.

Rachel Berry has the voice of a goddess.

Santana has heard singing before—her father sang, as did her grandmother, and sometimes her father would invite colleagues to the bachelor cottage for parlor games and she would listen to them belt out old ballads gathered around the piano while she remained cloistered in the kitchen with Abuela, keeping out of sight—but Santana has never heard anyone sing like Rachel Berry does now.

Rachel's voice babbles, almost like laughter, twinkling over the kinds of notes that don't exist in songs from San Juan or the ditties doctors sing while tipsy from sherry and ale. Rachel pulls awful faces, stretched almost to the point of grotesqueness, but produces the highest, clearest sounds Santana has ever heard the human voice make. Rachel sings in a language that sounds almost familiar to Santana, just a shade off from Spanish, but her words hardly matter; her voice is paramount.

She sings with such agility that it almost seems that the music has trouble keeping up with her. Her voice rises and falls in deft and sudden climbs and plunges, moving from fullness to high stratospheric distillation. As she listens, Santana feels something shift inside her and tears prick at the corners of her eyes; she holds her breath.

The song swells to its final note and Rachel rings, plucking what Santana can only imagine is the high E about which she had boasted on the train from the firmament, pulling it down from heaven to share with the earth.

The wine goblet on the table pops, bursting on its pedestal, the glass cracking and breaking away from itself.

Rachel finishes her note.

The big top erupts to raucous applause and the audience rises to its feet. Santana joins with them, clapping so hard that her arms hurt from it, her heart tittering with excitement. The ovation lasts for several long minutes. Rachel stands from her stool and curtsies graciously to the audience. She smiles, genuinely appreciative, but Santana can't help but notice that she also seems sad, a twinge of melancholy passing over her face, there and then gone in an instant.

(It isn't quite circus loneliness. It's something else Santana can't name.)

The three clowns rush back into the ring and remove the props, the trilby tramp carrying a broom and dustpan, which he uses to sweep up and remove the remnants of the fractured goblet from the ring. As the clowns finish their cleaning, Rachel takes one more bow and then disappears along with the clowns into the wings, waving at the audience as she goes.

William appears in the center ring. "Thank you, thank you! Our Little Malibran, everyone!" he cheers, soaking up the continued applause as Rachel's proxy. "Now that we've had our music, how about a little danger? Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a frontiersman skilled in the art of knife throwing, whose precision goes unmatched in these fine United States! I give to you Mr. Daniel S. Pierce and his beautiful daughter, Brittany, straight from the heart of Appalachia to the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus!"

Santana forgets to breathe.

Several supes tromp into the ring, carrying with them a large flat of wood and what looks like an oversized doorjamb. They arrange the flat of wood standing upright in the center of the ring, using the jamb to prop it up. Once they have it standing, Santana sees the outline of a human form drawn in silhouette on the flat.

A human not-a-target.

The spotlight shifts to the flat just as Brittany and her father emerge from backstage into the ring. On impulse, Santana clasps her hands together, as if in prayer. Brittany smiles up at the audience, waving happily to them. She carries a satchel strung over one shoulder and walks with a bounce in her step, almost dancing across the stage. White light catches on Brittany's white costume, haloing her like the circus city. Her smile burns, noonday brilliant. Her eyes sweep over the audience, and Santana's heart stops as Brittany glances over her. She wonders if Brittany sees her.

(She wants that more than anything.)

At first, Santana focuses so much on Brittany that she forgets to even notice Brittany's father, but then as Brittany takes her position before the wooden target and her father steps in front of her, Santana feels an immense curiosity about him.

Mr. Pierce wears buckskins, outfitted like a mountain man, complete with coonskin cap. A bandolier replete with several flat daggers hangs across his shoulders. He's tall and blonde, like Brittany, but shares nothing of his daughter's sunny disposition; he looks surly and walks as if he carries a great, invisible burden somewhere on his person. He scowls, face hard and unshaven, and makes no attempts to impress the crowd or even acknowledge them. Santana wonders how a father can be so very different from his daughter.

Brittany sets her satchel in the center of the ring and then steps up to the wooden target, leaning back against it, spreading herself out like a human star so that her limbs stretch to the target's edges. Mr. Pierce stands right in front of her, meeting her eyes.

"Let's count out some paces for our hero, shall we?" William coaches the audience. "One, two, three, four..."

Mr. Pierce takes long strides away from Brittany, one for every number. The crowd joins in with William's call, bringing Mr. Pierce up to ten. With the countdown complete, Mr. Pierce stands about fifteen feet from his target—from Brittany. Santana has never felt more nervous about anything in her entire life, but, for her part, Brittany appears calm. Brittany smiles at her father and waves again at the audience just as the band strikes up a dramatic tune.

A beat passes and then, without warning, Mr. Pierce brandishes one of the knives from his bandolier, heaving it in one swift motion towards Brittany against the target.

In a single second, Santana sees the knife glean against the stage lights and then embedded itself into the wood of the target with a heavy _thunk_, so close to Brittany's right ear that Santana gasps, even though the blade landed true.

Mr. Pierce draws another knife and flips it, holding it by its blade instead of its handle, flat in his hands. Brittany doesn't flinch as he throws the blade with the same blunt, sure motion as he used before. The audience jumps as the blade finds home, catching in the wooden target just above Brittany's shoulder.

Mr. Pierce picks up his pace and Santana feels certain that she doesn't breathe until the last of his knives sheaves itself in the target, harmless alongside Brittany's hip. He's lined her with knives, following the outline on the target. Santana suddenly wishes that her grandmother were with her to start thanking _santos_ on her rosary. Santana applauds louder than anyone in her section—perhaps louder than anyone in the whole circus—for Brittany's safety, feeling something welling inside her, warm, grateful, and concerned.

But the act doesn't end as Santana had expected it would.

Instead, Brittany dislodges the knives from the board, freeing each one with a sharp, strong jerk of her wrist, and then returns the lot of them—a half dozen in all—to her father before scurrying over to her satchel and procuring an object from it, her back turned to the audience.

When she faces the crowd again, Brittany reveals a bright red apple, large and ripe.

She smiles as she scampers back over to the board, arranging herself so that she stands in the first position of a ballerina. With a smile lighting her face, Brittany sets the apple atop her own head.

"Looks like we have ourselves a modern-day William Tell!" William the Ringmaster crows from the sidelines. "Uh-oh, Brittany! You best be careful!"

Santana doesn't think she can watch, but, at the same time, she can't bring herself not to watch, either. She sits, transfixed, and draws a hand to her chest, checking her heart to see if it's still there because she can't feel it working beneath her rib bones anymore.

Brittany shifts, contorting herself so that she holds one of her legs to her body, standing in an upright split. Mr. Pierce heaves a knife at her, landing it where her raised leg once stood. Brittany shifts again, arranging herself into a graceful pose, with one leg stretched out behind her as she stands in profile against the board. Her father slings a knife towards her, lodging it near the tip of her nose. The whole time, the apple remains perfectly balanced atop Brittany's head.

One, two, three more knives all find purchase in the target as Brittany shifts, fluid and practiced into yet more poses, her body moving in a way that Santana has never seen anyone else's body move before.

(Brittany moves like Rachel sings.)

Finally Brittany straightens upright, standing with her arms plainly at her sides. Mr. Pierce has only one knife left.

"Shall we see Mr. Pierce take the apple?" William asks the crowd, receiving a roar of approval in response.

In answer to the crowd's cheers, Mr. Pierce pauses and produces a red sash from one of the pockets at his waist. Mr. Pierce holds the sash up for the audience to see and then lifts it to his own face. To Santana's horror, he ties it around his head, blindfolding himself.

"Sweet Jesus...," someone nearby Santana mutters, and Santana finds herself surprised to realize that she wasn't the one who said it.

With his blindfold firmly in place, Mr. Pierce aligns his knife, cocking his elbow and aiming the throw. Brittany looks straight at him, never wavering. Santana feels every anxiety; she wills the whole circus to stop its breathing and hold perfectly still, lest any little thing disturb this most critical juncture of the act.

The throw.

Santana flinches and shuts her eyes, but opens them almost immediately to see the apple cleft over Brittany's head, its juice and pulp dripping down into Brittany's hair, but Brittany's head blessedly, wonderfully whole in itself. Mr. Pierce removes his blindfold to thunderous applause. William the Ringmaster says something, but Santana doesn't catch it; her heartbeat is too loud.

Brittany and her father step forward, linking hands, and bow to the audience as the supes emerge from the shadows to take the target and its prop away. Santana applauds so loudly that she feels certain that Brittany must hear her especially above even the roar of the rest of the audience. She watches as Brittany scurries over to the satchel, picking it up and producing a towel from it in a single elegant motion and then retreats after her father backstage, drying her head with the towel as she goes. Santana doesn't stop clapping until well after Brittany disappears into the darkness.

After that, Santana hardly pays attention to the final act of the matinee, which involves an elephant tamer having the great beasts balance on balls, walk on their hind legs, and trumpet fanfare along to songs that the band director plays on the harmonium. All Santana can think about is Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

The circus ends with another romp, the full cast taking the stage for a final turn around the rings, from which Brittany and her father appear strangely absent. Santana claps and cheers so loudly that she wonders if she won't lose her voice or languish, too tired to lift her arms tomorrow. She feels a great swell of affection for the whole company but can't help but wonder to where Brittany has disappeared again.

(Santana has finally seen the circus.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: As always, I would like to offer a special thanks to my flawless beta Han at socallmedaisy, who not only keeps me on track, but also makes the writing process so much damn fun. #brotp: with the u and everything<strong>

**Also, thank you all for your kind reviews and for taking the time to read!**

**Spanish translation:**

_**santos : saints**_


	3. The Knife Thrower's Daughter Part II

**Chapter 2 (continued): The Knife Thrower's Daughter, Part II**

**Sunday, June 26th, 1898: Worthington, Minnesota**

Strange how a circus can happen so quickly and then end.

After the matinee, the townspeople from Worthington quickly quit the fairgrounds, headed home for a late lunch or off to enjoy the rest of their Sunday afternoons. They babble as they go, recounting every act and feat, criticizing the performers, and endeavoring in vain to ascertain circus secret and trick. With nowhere else to go, Santana wanders back toward the residential side of the circus camp, keeping watch for Brittany all the while.

Santana wants to tell Brittany how wonderful she was, how brave and how brilliant. She wants to ask Brittany if it frightens her when her father throws knives at her head. She wants to say that Brittany has a beautiful name, too, because she didn't get a chance to do so earlier. She also just wants to see Brittany—because even though Santana watched Brittany survive the knife throwing act with her own two eyes, somehow she won't feel satisfied until she has better, closer proof of Brittany's continued wellbeing.

Everything in Santana hums to the tune of Brittany Pierce, wherever she may be.

Almost on impulse, Santana travels back to the trisection of tents—two small and one large—where she met Brittany before, hoping, perhaps, to find Brittany there and waiting for her again.

(In dreams, Santana always finds her grandmother in the kitchen, her father beside the garden gate.)

(The part of Santana that doesn't speak but only feels knows that if she simply stops, Brittany will come to her somehow.)

She doesn't.

Instead, Puck intercepts her.

"Hey, ladybird!" he says brightly, running to catch up with Santana from behind.

Santana stifles a groan.

"How'd you like the show?" Puck asks, puffing out his chest and smirking. "Did you see me lick them flames? I feel good as new! My leg's all healed. Your old man took good care of me, huh?"

Santana offers Puck what she hopes is a kind smile. She wants to feel glad for him in his triumphant return to his work, but somehow he and all his interests seem a thousand miles away from everything that matters to her at the moment.

"You did fine," she says demurely, looking at Puck so he catches her understatement.

Puck laughs, good-natured. "Yeah, well, we gotta make sure that you do fine, too, come the evening show. Ken told me that he wants you to start up right away. Now that you've seen a performance, you know how things run, mostly, so what do you say we go practice the act? I'll do twice as fine if I have two pretty ladies dancing around me instead of just one, you know."

Santana blushes at Puck's compliment.

(Not for the reason that he thinks.)

(Not for the reason that she thinks, either.)

"Well, I suppose...," Santana says distractedly, checking around the next corner to see if maybe she can spot Brittany. The sun casts fractal patterns across the grass. Various members of the company mill about, but none of them is Brittany.

"Good!" Puck says. "Let's go get the gear!"

Ten minutes later, Santana finds herself standing in a small clearing just outside the mess pit and holding an unlighted flail, Puck tracing out the crude shape of a ring in the grass with his foot. Puck's gear pack and two filled water buckets lie nearby in the grass. Puck pinches his tongue between his teeth as he works, wearing his idiot smile. His skin is shiny with sweat, and he uses the red sash of his costume to wipe his brow.

"All right, ladybird," he says happily, turning to face Santana once he feels satisfied with the circumference of the ring. "Let's teach you how to play with fire."

When he arrived to fetch Santana in Omaha, Puck explained the basic logistics of the gypsy act to her.

According to him, the underlying trick—and what the audience doesn't notice—is that Rachel doesn't actually contribute much in the way of true fire dancing to the act: her choreography is uncomplicated and, Puck insists, safe, conservative in its movements.

The trick is that the largeness of Rachel's gestures masks the fact that she basically just shuffles her feet and spins her flail in the same tight circles all the way through the performance. Puck acts as her diversion, distracting the audience with his lively, daring antics. With their eyes trained to him, no one in the crowd notices how very pedestrian Rachel's fire dancing actually is on the whole.

Now Puck explains that he intends to give Santana the same treatment as Rachel. According to him, all Santana has to do is learn to wave her flail in consistent circles and keep a safe distance from Puck, and she'll be set to go.

He gives her fire safety instructions: don't stop moving when the flames get close to you; if you catch fire, drop to the earth and smother the flames as you roll; always keep your eyes on the flames; be careful not to drip kerosene from the flail down your arms, lest your hair or clothing ignite.

Finally, Puck details the choreography for the act: the three gypsies will light their instruments backstage and enter the ring as the audience has their attention trained on William the Ringmaster at the far edge of the tent; the three gypsies spin around when the music starts, all of them walking at an even pace toward the front of the ring, with Puck circling the ladies until they reach midway, at which point they'll all dance and Puck will perform his prestige trick, blowing fire, signaling the finale for the act.

According to Puck, the clowns leave water buckets in place for the gypsies when they come on stage to harass William just prior to the equestrienne act. Puck reminds Santana that if she ever gets into trouble during the performance, she should just run to one of the buckets and extinguish her flames forthwith.

"Sound good?" he asks her.

It doesn't sound good at all.

The longer Puck talks about fire and the possibility of burning oneself, the more Santana questions her ability to safely perform the act. Though Puck insists that Santana's participation will be minimal—more smoke and mirrors than actual skill—she can't help but quaver as she thinks back to what she saw from Puck and Rachel at the matinee. Whatever Puck says, Rachel was handling real fire, and, no matter how Puck spins things, real fire is always dangerous.

"We'll run through it once without the fire," Puck offers, and, since that prospect seems harmless enough, Santana consents, nodding gingerly.

"One, two, ready, go!" Puck counts, clapping out a rhythm for Santana to follow as he leads her through the steps, guiding her to the fore of their fake ring. "Swing that flail," he encourages. "Just use wide, easy circles. That's it. Nice and even, ladybird."

As Puck instructs Santana, a small crowd begins to gather around their ring. The spectators include a handful of children; Finn and some other fellows who Santana supposes are supes; and a few scattered performers, one of whom is the trilby tramp and another of whom is a young clown Santana recognizes from today's performance. This makeshift audience seats itself around the peripheries of the practice space, watching with interest as Puck guides Santana through her paces.

With so many eyes on her, Santana can't help but feel self-conscious. She tries not to look at anyone in the crowd but stumbles under their attention all the same.

"Come on, ladybird! Focus," Puck coaches.

The more she practices, the more thoroughly convinced Santana becomes that she'll never be able to perform this act either satisfactorily or safely. She can't seem to keep from tripping over her own shoes or allowing the flail to thwack against her skirts on its backswing. She'll light herself on fire somehow, she knows it.

For as much as Santana doubts herself, Puck seems to think that she's doing well—or at least that he's a good teacher.

"You ever gonna light that flail for her?" Finn teases Puck from the sidelines.

"Sure thing," Puck says smugly, gesturing Santana over to his gear pack, which lies listless on the border of the ring.

From the pack, Puck produces a canister of kerosene and a box of long-stemmed phosphorous matches. He confiscates Santana's flail from her and walks several paces away from the mock ring before dousing the rope wick knotted at the end of the chain with the kerosene. Once he sufficiently saturates the flail, Puck lights it, his fingers moving quickly as hummingbirds darting between open lily blooms, pinching out the match head to extinguish it before he turns to Santana, smiling.

"Puck—," Santana says nervously, but he ignores her.

"All right, ladybird. You're a real gypsy now," Puck says, handing the flail over to her with a strange sort of reverence.

Santana accepts Puck's offering with trembling hands, biting her lips into her mouth. She feels unsafe even just holding the lighted flail—what if a sudden rush of wind blows the flames onto her skirt?—and wants to avoid swinging the chain more than anything.

Puck won't allow her to just stand still, though.

"Come on," he says. "Let's hop to it before those flames go out! One, two, ready, go!"

Ultimately, Santana manages not to light herself on fire but not without annoying Puck beyond reason, as she refuses to swing the flail at anything more than just a languid wave and barely shuffles her feet as she follows Puck to the front of the ring.

"You're supposed to dance," Puck reminds her through gritted teeth.

Santana stares at Puck, silent. She doesn't want to dance—not with fire, not with him. She holds her flail still and at arm's length from her. Though Puck's mounting displeasure makes her uncomfortable, she doesn't either blink or look away from him. She only stares, willing him to declare that the lesson is over and dismiss her from the ring.

It takes a long minute before Puck finally relents, sighing as if Santana is the most maddening creature in existence.

"Fine," he says. "Suit yourself, ladybird, but you better be ready to go on tonight, otherwise Ken'll skin you, you hear?"

Puck grabs up one of the water buckets he had prepared from the side of the ring and snatches the flail away from Santana, unceremoniously dousing it so that a jet of curling steam rises up from the bucket against the backdrop of the blue Minnesota sky. He shakes his head, disappointed.

"Performing ain't so bad, ladybird," he says, "I promise. You just got to trust me."

Santana stares at him, feeling somehow ashamed.

(She doesn't trust Puck, even though he's saved her life these past three weeks.)

"Ladybird," Puck pouts, "quit looking like that."

When he shakes his head and glances away from her, Santana can't tell if he feels annoyed with her or guilty for causing her discomfort. After a minute, he glances back, his expression resigned.

"What do you say we work on your chiromancy act instead?" he offers.

It's his way of trying to be nice.

Though some of the audience disperses after Puck douses the fire, those persons who remain gather closer as Santana and Puck seat themselves at the center of the ring in the grass. The sun still feels just as hot as it did at noon, and the air buzzes with all manner of insects, ranging from obnoxious mosquitoes to metallic green dragonflies as long as Santana's fingers.

Santana tries to sit modestly and with a straight back, remembering years of her grandmother's etiquette lessons, but she finds it difficult to feel like a lady surrounded by so many gawping men and boys—and especially with Puck paying her such devilish attention—no matter what posture she takes. Puck proffers her his hand.

"All right, ladybird. What's my future?" he says daringly.

Santana uses both her hands to hold Puck's one, feeling his thick bones and the strength in his palms. She glances at the creases in his skin, dirty with day-grime, char, and hard work. It's not nearly as difficult to read his palm as it was to read Mr. Adams'.

"Your loyalty to your employer will lead you on great journeys," she says, smirking to herself because she knows that she's right.

After all, Puck traveled all the way from New York to Tekamah to rejoin the circus upon recuperating from his injury. Moreover, he has undoubtedly traveled to various other destinations across the U.S. during his many years of employment with the circus. Really, Santana isn't telling the future at all right now—she's simply recounting the past.

"Hey, mind your accent, ladybird," Puck scolds her, patting her knee.

"Right," Santana says, jogging. "Okay, yeah." She puts on her grandmother's accent, sliding into it as one would into a borrowed evening coat. "You will see many fantastic things. You will experience many great adventures. Your fortune?" she leads, thinking back to the euchre game.

"Yes?" Puck says interestedly.

"Your fortune will change as often as you change the cards in your hands," she teases him gently. She gives his hand a squeeze. "Things will be different for you now than they were before, though," she promises, thinking of his accident.

"Can you tell when Puck is going to die? I want to know if I should force him to pony up before he kicks it," Finn pipes up from the sidelines.

Santana thinks that he's teasing, but she can't be sure. She gives him a sharp look.

"No," she says firmly.

"What about with tarot cards?" the trilby tramp asks.

"Hey, I know she can do that!" Puck brags. "I seen her do it!"

(Santana feels a pang.)

"Let's see it!" Finn says excitedly, scrambling clumsily to his feet. "Hey, you have cards, don't you?" he asks Santana.

Santana seizes, trapped. The sky seems too big all of a sudden. Her eyes widen, frantic. She tries desperately not to think of New York, not to cry.

"No," she says.

"But you do," Puck argues. "Mr. Adams sent 'em to you yesterday, ladybird."

Santana feels cornered and assailed on every side. She wants to bolt but doesn't know where she could go. Her heartbeat hammers in her chest, faster than it did when she watched the Flying Dragon Changs, even. She swallows, looking to every side for a possible escape. She can't read the cards, she won't, and especially not for Puck, not after everything he's done for her.

"I can't read the cards today!" she snaps, the harshness in her voice taking the boys aback. The assembled crowd recoils, as if she's just threatened them. Santana doesn't care. "No cards today!" she repeats. When Puck opens his mouth to say something, she cuts him off, reaching for the first excuse that comes to mind, "You can't read cards on a Sunday, idiot! Don't you know anything about anything?"

Puck actually scoots away from her, as if she might slap him. He looks like a little boy who just pestered a cat to the limits of its tolerance and knows it, fearing its scratch.

"All right, ladybird," he says, holding up his hands in mock surrender.

Even though Puck gives, Santana doesn't feel as if she's won anything. Before anyone else can speak, she scrambles to her feet.

"You all should be ashamed of yourselves," she snarls, looking around at Finn and the other spectators, who stare up at her with wide, white eyes. She doesn't know what she means by what she says—all she knows is that she can't read the cards and she won't.

She flees.

Without meaning to do it, Santana somehow ends up back at her and Puck's tent, which she recognizes only because Puck has left the flaps slightly open, allowing her to glimpse inside and see their things piled up along the back wall. Even though she burns with shame, Santana knows she won't ever apologize to Puck for losing her temper today; that's not who she is with him, and that's not who he wants her to be, either.

All at once, she feels defeated and exhausted from yelling, like she's just fought a war and lost. Ducking inside the tent, she flops down on the cot face first, desperate to hide her embarrassment, desperate to hide from everything. The fear in Puck and his friends' eyes writes and rewrites itself in her mind, a kind of unsendable letter. She sighs, soaking in the oppressive heat of the tent canvas, listening to the creaks in the cot frame as it settles under her weight. The matinee already feels like it happened hours ago—or days ago, even.

(Santana starts to think of apples before she falls to sleep.)

* * *

><p>Santana awakens to hot-soft-wet pressing against her neck, dragging over the edge of her jaw, moistening the round of her cheek, nibbling at her ear. Something solid and dense half-shrouds her body. Something inhales and exhales against her ribs.<p>

Someone emits low, strangled grunts against the shell of her ear.

Her eyes fly open, and she panics, the peppery stench of perspiring man-body overwhelming her senses, her thoughts addled by the immediate presence of the thick human weight draped over her.

Puck.

She jerks, unsure of her location, unused to sharing her space with another person. She feels smothered, sweaty all over, and almost feverish, drowned in all the unwanted sensation. Puck kisses her neck.

"Get off!" Santana shrieks, pushing Puck back. When he doesn't fall, she realizes that he kneels on the floor beside the cot. She realizes that they're in the tent. At the circus. That Puck just kissed her neck while she was asleep.

She looks down at herself, frantic, and finds her skirt and shirt in place, but still can't stop from shaking, from feeling robbed and naked.

Puck still isn't far enough away from her. Half of Santana wants to gouge Puck's eyes out with her fingernails while the other half of her never wants to touch Puck again. Puck leans over the cot, surprised.

"Get off!" Santana shrieks again, slapping at whatever part of Puck she can hit.

"Ow! Ladybird! I thought you liked it!" Puck howls, putting up his arm to block Santana's blows, leaning away from her, genuinely surprised.

Santana feels no less defensive than she did a second ago; she doesn't put down her hands. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears and at her temples, and she breathes raggedly, in little spates, as if she just ran the full length of the circus camp instead of awakened from a nap. All her rest is gone in an instant.

"You can't kiss me like that!" she says, wiping the feel of Puck's lips from her neck with her hands. She can't fully express her distress; her whole body screams, on high alert.

"But we're married!" Puck protests.

"We're not!" she protests back.

"Good as," he shrugs, lowering his voice perhaps in the hopes that Santana will lower her voice, as well. He looks at her, expression earnest, bearing no traces of his usual smirk.

"It's just pretend!" Santana snaps at him, not pacified in the least. She can feel Puck's touch crawling all over her, unwelcome; she would gladly step out of her skin just to get away from it.

"Ladybird," Puck says seriously. "We ain't ever gonna be more married than we are right now. As far as Mr. Adams and the company are concerned, you and I are hitched! There ain't no preacher who'll tie the knot between someone like me and someone like you, and there ain't no rabbis on this side of the Mississippi to do it for us, neither. We're gonna be living in the same tent, sharing meals, helping each other—tell me how we ain't married, huh?"

Sometimes, when something upsets Santana very much, she stills. She has only experienced such a reaction twice before in her life, both times because of the cards. She can feel it happening again now, though, even with the tarot deck tucked, unused, inside her valise.

Santana wants to say a million things about the law, God, rules, knowing the truth for oneself, and maybe even lack of love, but somehow the only words that come to her mind have to do with how Puck paid her way to the circus and how Puck has taken care of her ever since her father died—how no one else will ever want to marry her anyway.

The words don't feel like rebuttals, just reasons why Santana owes Puck more than she can ever repay him. Something rears but then shrinks inside her. She feels exceptionally beholden to Puck. She wants to shout at him again but finds that she can't bring herself to do it.

It isn't as if Santana says yes, but she also doesn't say no, either.

Instead, she just stiffens.

Puck gives Santana what he must think is a sly smile, like he wants to share a private joke with her. "As long as we're doing all the work of being married," he says, "we might as well get to enjoy the fun of it, too, huh, ladybird?"

He leans into Santana's space again and presses his lips to hers.

Her second kiss.

Puck's kiss elicits no response in Santana; her body feels silent and closed-off. In sensation, this kiss reads no differently from the kisses Santana pressed onto her grandmother and father as a child. It isn't pleasurable—just there. Puck slobbers his kisses onto Santana like a dog, his lips consuming hers, painting saliva over her top lip and the sides of her mouth. Santana's whole body turns rigid. She doesn't move or breathe.

If Puck notices Santana's non-involvement in the kiss, it certainly doesn't give him pause or slow him down in the least. His hot breath trails over her face as he moves down to kiss at the hinge of Santana's jaw, leaving a run of saliva from her lips to the side of her face. Santana tenses even further. She thinks _Oh God_ and waits.

A bell rings.

The sharpness of the sound is enough to scare Puck off from Santana. He springs away from her and looks around, startled. Santana just feels relief. It's the round up bell for the afternoon show; a similar bell rang this morning before the matinee.

A look of annoyance crosses Puck's face. "Later," he pants, short of breath. His eyes sweep the tent and then fall back on Santana. "Get your costume on and grab your cards. I'll wait outside for you. Ken's got a tent set up for your act. Time to break a leg."

And, with that, Puck leaves Santana alone in the tent, closing the flaps after him as he goes.

It takes almost a full minute before Santana can bring herself to move. Puck's spit dries on her skin, leaving the salty-hard-herbal scent of the inside of his mouth painted beneath her nostrils. Santana feels the print of Puck all over her. Her heart won't calm down. She thinks _Oh God _and waits again, this time without knowing for what.

* * *

><p>Puck waits outside the tent while Santana doffs her plainclothes. Even with walls of canvas between them, she hates having him so near to her during her indisposed moment. She feels strange, stripping down to her knickers with Puck standing just a few feet away from her, even if he can't see her or what she's up to.<p>

For a long minute, Santana stands in the grass, barefooted and almost naked, breathing rabbit-breaths and wondering how she ever got so far away from New York and civil society. How has it happened that she joined a circus? Who would ever be fooled into believing that she belongs here?

Only after another minute does she change into her costume. In the next minute after that, she procures the tarot deck from her valise, though she dreads to do it. Finally, she meets Puck outside the tent.

When he wraps his big, rough hand around her wrist, she flinches and fights back the urge to shake his touch, but he doesn't seem to notice her wariness of him at all. Instead, he leads her quickly but kindly through the tent rows and past the billboards onto the circus grounds proper, steering her toward one of the gazebos lining the pitch adjacent to the big top.

A table draped in a finely decorated green, fuchsia, gold, and blue cloth sits inside this particular gazebo, along with two chairs, one on either side of the table. A sandwich board sign stands in front of the gazebo. It reads MADAME ROSSETTI, GYPSY FORTUNETELLER in large gold and purple calligraphic letters, with the subheading "Reader of Both Palms and Tarot Cards" written neatly underneath the main billing. Stars, the night sky, and a quarter moon decorate the background of the board, which, in all, appears very ornate and mysterious.

Ken stands just beside the thing, arms crossed over his bulbous belly, sweat dripping down his face under the brim of his little bowler hat. He taps his foot impatiently on the ground as Puck and Santana approach him.

"All right, ladybird," Puck whispers against Santana's ear, guiding Santana to a stop just in front of Ken. "Knock 'em dead."

(She hopes she doesn't.)

Ken looks annoyed at Puck for taking an extra second to counsel Santana.

"Puck," he says curtly, nodding the stiffest greeting Santana has ever seen.

"Ken," Puck smirks back. For a second, Puck holds Ken's gaze, as if challenging him. Santana squirms, not sure of the rules in this situation; the uncertainty makes her nervous. Something passes between Puck and Ken. Somehow, it seems like Puck wins their silent competition, even though he probably shouldn't. Ken looks away, and, in the split second that he does, Puck nudges Santana's elbow. "See you at the show, ladybird," Puck says, squinting at the sun, his idiot grin returning in a trice.

He seems excited.

Santana doesn't feel the same.

Part of Santana—the deferent, beholden part of her that's already forgiven Puck for how he frightened her back at the tent—wants Puck to stay because the truth is that Santana doesn't trust herself to perform her act sans Puck's supervision. Somehow having Puck around makes Santana feel more confident, or at least less liable.

Ken doesn't allow Santana any time to consider calling after Puck as he departs to set up his own fire eating act somewhere further down the midway. Instead, he rounds on her.

"Okay, little missus," he says. "Deal is that everybody pays up front at the gate. If anyone tips you, you get to keep seventy-percent. The other thirty goes to your talker for the bally—and today that's me. You want to go fast but not too fast. You got a half-hour before the performance bell sounds."

Santana stares at Ken, wide-eyed. She has no idea what a talker is or a bally, for that matter. Her confusion must show on her face.

Ken sighs, sounding put-upon. "Means I'll drum up customers for you," he explains. "Once I do that, all you gotta do is make sure you keep 'em interested. Don't forget that you're supposed to be from Rome. And don't forget to sound mysterious. Keep it vague, if you can. And don't scare nobody."

He gives Santana a scrutinizing look, the same as Mr. Adams and Ma Jones before him. He seems not to like what he finds at all and scowls.

Santana just nods. "Yes, sir," she says quietly, clutching her cards between her hands.

"Best get behind the table," Ken says, producing a watch from his pocket and checking the time. "The fair's set to start any minute."

Santana holds her breath.

* * *

><p>Santana sits at the chair behind the table, her tarot cards stacked neatly on the tablecloth before her. Ken stands outside Santana's gazebo atop an overturned egg crate and yells to the patrons passing by him on the midway, making claims about Santana's great prowess as a diviner of the future to them. His husky voice rings out over the prattle of the fairgoers, and he waves those patrons interested in Santana's act into queue with a little horse switch, smirking as they join the line.<p>

"Come see the world-famous gypsy fortuneteller, Madame Rossetti of Rome! Have her look into your tomorrows and reveal your fate!"

First ten, then twenty, then thirty, and finally forty people heed Ken's calls, and, as they do so, a surge of dread rises in Santana. To date, she has read exactly two palms and three sets of cards before in her life. At the moment, she feels neither world-famous nor even fit to perform her act.

The first persons in the line are a man and his wife, the man the one who takes a seat in the chair before Santana's table, his wife standing at his side, one hand pressed protectively over his shoulder. They're middle-aged and dressed in church clothes, the man in a fine blue frock coat and dun vest with a top hat, the woman in a pretty champagne tea gown and fancy chiffon touring headwear. The man has a bushy blonde mustache.

He smiles at Santana, excited like a schoolchild about to learn the nature of his birthday surprise. His expression seems so pleasant; Santana truly wishes that she could smile back at him.

"A palm reading, if you will," the man says jovially, setting his hand supine on the table for Santana to take.

(Santana feels some relief—but not much—at his request.)

Somehow, Santana had imagined that giving a palm reading would be rather a private affair involving just herself and a single patron, but now she discovers herself mistaken: not only does the man's wife involve herself in the process, but the forty other odd people in the line press up close, crowding around Santana's gazebo just like they crowded around Rachel's father's booth when Santana watched him at the morning fair.

Since Santana's gazebo has no walls—only a roof—people surround her on every side. They jibber and point, their gossip about Santana, her craft, and her form snaking, eel-like, through the sea of their hot bodies. Santana catches snatches of their verdicts but never enough of their words to form opinions of her own.

She hadn't expected quite such an audience. She gulps.

Looking down at the man's pink palm, it occurs to Santana that she knows even less about this man than she knew about Mr. Adams when she read Mr. Adams' fortune yesterday. Whereas Santana had at least met Mr. Adams' acquaintance and heard tell of him from Puck prior to giving his reading, Santana doesn't have any idea about this man's name, occupation, or reputation.

Santana realizes that she must tell the man what he wants to hear, but she can't for the life of her figure out what that might be, having no measure of the man's basic disposition. Though Santana doesn't know exactly what would happen to her should she fail to please her patron, she imagines the crowd shouting terrible words at her and Mr. Adams firing her on the spot before having her bodily removed from the circus grounds. She feels an ineffable fear for the unknown and dreads to fail.

She stalls.

Putting on her Spanish accent, she says, "I just read for you today, sir? Not for your pretty wife?" eyes flicking between the two spouses. Her voice sounds high and flighty in her own ears, but no one here knows her well enough to recognize her nerves. She flashes the man what she hopes is a wily look, channeling Puck, but mostly feels lost.

Before the husband can respond, his wife makes a scoffing noise, her grip tightening on his shoulder. "Heavens!" she says. "If the good Lord had intended me to know my tomorrows already, he would have made them my todays!"

She sounds, for the most part, amused rather than remonstrative.

The crowd laughs at the woman's cheekiness.

"Come now, Agnes!" the man gruffs. "There's no harm in a little palmistry! Let the girl talk!" He offers Santana an apologetic look, as if to say _Don't mind her_ in reference to his wife.

The crowd laughs again.

Santana considers everything that she knows about the man now, which, admittedly, isn't much. She knows that the man and his wife are the first people in line, out of forty others, ahead of youths and young bachelors looking for a thrill. She knows that the man approached her table with childlike excitement. She knows that his wife seems to humor the man, though she differs from him in opinion. She knows he wants his fortune read.

Though the back of the man's hand feels hairy and sweaty, his palm itself appears smooth and dry, clean like Mr. Adams' palm, broad like Puck's, but otherwise unremarkable. Santana stares at the lines traversing the man's hand like railways crisscrossing the breadth of the American continent. Try as Santana might, she can derive no more meaning from the man's palm than she could from Egyptian hieroglyphs or one of the made up languages Mr. Gulliver encountered on his travels.

The man and his wife stare at Santana, waiting for her to say something. The whole crowd mutters, more than eighty eyes scrutinizing Santana's every breath and motion.

She can't stall any more than she already has.

"Your... sense of wonder will guide you on new adventures," she says slowly, her own voice sounding strange in her ears. She still has yet to master the subtle roll of her grandmother's accent. She feels like an imposter at everything. Her eyes flick to the man's face, gauging his reaction; she finds him looking pensive but thankfully engaged.

"Fascinating," his wife says from behind him.

Santana feels a thrill. She must have said something right.

She continues: "As you seek new ventures, you will do well to... take counsel... from those whom you trust." She tries not to look at the man's wife, lest she gives away her bluff, but she feels glad when the man looks to his wife of his own accord, taking the suggestion Santana laid out for him. Santana feels pleased. She goes on: "You will find yourself ahead of your competition. When you do, you must take advantage of your lead."

Considering that Mr. Adams cut Santana off when she read his palm yesterday and that Santana shouted at Puck before she finished reading his palm today, Santana honestly has no idea how much time she should allot to reading each patron's palm in her booth. For how long do palm readings usually last?

The wife nudges her husband's shoulder. "Ask her about the investments," she urges, as though she couldn't just ask Santana herself.

Santana stiffens. They're going to ask her about money? Having none of it herself, Santana knows nothing about the matter. Her father wasn't a Wall Street man, either. He made his only investments in the upkeep of the bachelor cottage; he hadn't the luxury of stocks or bonds with a young daughter and aged mother to support.

Knowing that she must not give the counsel she hasn't the knowledge to give, Santana blurts, "You must seek out a wise counselor who knows about the market. He will advise you on all you need to know."

In her mind, she imagines a banker or a broker or even an old friend of the couple who keeps up with the happenings of the exchange—anyone who has more expertise than Santana herself to dispense financial advise to them.

"Where can we find this counselor?" the man asks reverently.

Santana hadn't thought about the specifics of her suggestion. She panics and says the first place that comes to mind: "New York City."

The man and his wife nod, impressed. Santana sees them taking note of her, trusting her without even knowing who she is, and feels both a thrill in having performed her job to their satisfaction and a new surge of nerves at the thought of how much power she could potentially have over these strangers. The man and his wife smile at Santana as though the three of them share some happy secret.

Around them, the rest of the crowd murmurs their approval, nodding their endorsement of Santana's astuteness and hissing questions to one another, wondering how Santana knew to say what she said. Santana hears some accusations of trickery or bedevilment but mostly willingness to believe and expressions of awe. She's never had so many people pay attention to her all at once before in her life, even on nights when her father would host his supper parties for the surgeons from the hospital at the bachelor cottage.

Santana strokes her thumb along the longest line of the man's hand and he seems to take the gesture as a sign that the reading has ended. He retracts his hand from her grasp and nods at her.

"Thank you, Madame," he says kindly. He looks at his wife and smiles. "I've always wanted an adventure."

"He has," the wife assures, returning her husband's smile.

For a second, the man and his wife just stare at Santana, pleased, and Santana feels greatly relieved, as if she just avoided some great trouble, or, better yet, replaced the trouble with good happenings. The air buzzes with humidity, even in the shade. The people in the queue leading to the gazebo start to shift, excited to see that these first patrons have stood up to leave. Some of them applaud, and then more people join in. Santana's face heats.

"I think you are the most practical fortuneteller in these United States," the wife declares as her husband takes her by the elbow and leads her off, back to the midway, tipping his hat at Santana as he and his wife go, disappearing through the throng.

(Briefly, Santana thinks of how strange it is to tell someone his fortune without ever learning his name.)

* * *

><p>Whereas Santana found it difficult to give the previous gentleman a reading, not knowing what he wanted to hear, with her next patron she encounters quite the opposite problem: namely, that she knows what the patron wants to hear all too well but feels a distinct, uncomfortable pressure to disappoint him, mostly on account of the presence of his friends, who would rather like to hear Santana say other things about the fellow than what he desires.<p>

The patron himself is a teenage boy, probably a year or two younger than Santana. He comes with a cohort of a half-dozen or so other boys, the lot of them blonde, brunet, and pale-skinned, all dressed in a uniform of reefer blazers with red piping and beige chinos, bright, striped bowties decorating their necks.

At first, Santana thinks the boys must attend some sort of college together, but then she catches sight of the badges on their breast pockets and realizes that they comprise a choir from the Worthington Presbyterian Church Warblers. Some of the boys wear straw boater hats, others of them go hatless.

They jostle each other with hard elbows and little shoves, looking at her with amused interest, like they've never seen the likes of someone like Santana before and don't precisely know what to make of her.

Santana can tell by the way that the other boys thrust her actual patron down into the chair that her patron is one of the least of them—an object of teasing among his peers. The other boys call this fellow by his last name only and muss his hair with sloppy hands, punching at his shoulders and razzing him about learning his fate. Santana feels some pity for her patron, though he bears his ribbing with a good-natured smile.

"Tell him that he'll marry the parson's cow!" his friends call. "Tell him that he'll move to Canada and wear buckskin and ride a dogsled!"

The crowd around the boys roars with laughter. Some of the people in the queue cheer, amused with the choirboys' antics. The boy himself just looks at Santana dopily, his mouth hanging slightly open. He has a gaunt, scarecrow face, hazel eyes, and bright blonde hair. His surname is Scandinavian. He doesn't wear a boater, unlike some of his bolder cohorts, and his uniform appears perfectly kempt.

Just based on the regulation state of his uniform, Santana can tell that this boy follows rules, which is perhaps why his mates find him so fit for abuse. Hope peeks out from the bright, upturned corners of his face.

Santana feels certain that the boy wants to hear that he will excel in his studies, find a good career, make a good marriage, and lead a good but unremarkable life; he doesn't want to drive a dogsled or have anything to do with cows.

Of course, Santana also feels certain that if she gives the boy a more conservative reading, his companions will shout abuse at her and clamor to hear something more exciting. The crowd at large might not like Santana to give the boy a conservative reading, either; they seem to expect something out of the ordinary and mill with an electric excitement.

Santana gulps, stuck. She holds the boy's hand in hers, gaze tracing over the pillowy pink of his fingertips and noting the little, white scar near the bottom of his thumb but finding no more answers on his skin than in her own mind.

Her eyes flick from the boy to his friends and back to his hand. She knows that anything she says will displease someone—and maybe even everyone. The boy looks at Santana expectantly, like she might tell him a secret. He trusts her already.

His expression gives Santana an idea.

The boy's friends crowd around him, open-mouthed and panting with an almost canine interest. Santana flashes them a grin—mysterious, she hopes, for so Ken told her that she must be—and sits up in her chair, leaning across the table. The people in the crowd around her gasp, her bold movement surprising them. She can feel both the crowd's and the boys' rising excitement as she puts her face close to her patron's ear, holding herself up with her elbows on the tabletop, her knees resting on her chair behind her.

Some of the boys whoop at her getting so close to their friend.

Some of them exclaim "Great Scott! Scott!" and Santana knows that it's because she has very nearly broken some rules.

She puts her mouth close to the boy's cheek and shields their conversation with her hand, hiding what she says from the other choirboys and the assembled throng. She whispers, just barely loud enough for her patron to hear: "You will study diligently, perform to your best abilities, and seek your fortune in the world. You will find a profession that suits you. If you like, you will continue to sing. You will leave behind your boyhood tormentors and not think of them again once you become a man. You will also never tell to your friends what I have told you now."

(It's more of her wishes for the boy, than anything.)

Her breath rebounds off the shell of the boy's ear, hotter and more humid than even the June air. The crowd titters with enthusiasm and Santana feels especially pleased with her own cleverness. She smiles and pulls away from the boy, her eyes meeting his as she sits back down in her chair. He looks at her with a sense of wonder.

"What did she say?" asks one of his friends, jostling the boy's shoulder.

The boy just stares at Santana, a slow smile curling his lips. "Can't tell you," he says smugly. The other boys hoot and look at Santana, impressed. She bites back a full grin. The boy stands up from his chair and faces the crowd. "She knows my whole future!" he says in a loud voice, eliciting a cheer in response. The audience breaks out into grateful applause.

As the choirboys bump and fluster her second patron from the gazebo, Santana can't help but feel that she's done something good, albeit difficult. While she knows she did no more than encourage the boy to work hard, he seems to feel that she's given him a promise.

Santana experiences such great relief at having succeeded in her second reading that it takes her a full moment to recognize her third patron as none other than Mr. Adams, today wearing a fine red fop suit, a pretty gold and green-striped waistcoat, a handsome gold Ascot, with a shiny pocket watch with an elaborate chain dangling from his breast pocket. He looks quite as vibrant as he did yesterday.

Mr. Adams approaches Santana's table flanked by a family of three other well-dressed persons: a tall, robust blonde man dressed in a handsome blue cutaway jacket, top hat, and fine gray and blue-striped Ascot with a gold stickpin in the shape of a horse threaded through the fold; a blonde woman with a cordiform face and a stretched, false-looking smile, clothed in a pretty, dotted afternoon dress with mutton sleeves and a chiffon bonnet, all in cream; and a thoroughly disinterested Quinn Fabray, still clothed in her Charvet shirtwaist, but now donning a more formal Sunday hat and carrying a parasol made from primrose lace. Both Mr. Adams and his three companions look far too richly attired for the circus midway.

(Santana suddenly feels very self-conscious, wearing her immodest costume.)

"Madame Rossetti!" Mr. Adams greets Santana in his booming voice. "I see you're having quite the successful first day on the job!"

His statement seems more directed to his companions than Santana herself, so Santana just nods, smiling demurely even though she feels stricken at suddenly finding herself face to face with her employer for only the second time since he hired her.

Mr. Adams seems not to notice Santana's nervousness. He gestures to the robust blonde man.

"This is Mr. Russell Fabray of the Allen & Pike Railroad, an associate of mine who has an interest in the circus."

He gestures to the blonde woman and Quinn.

"This is Mr. Fabray's wife, Mrs. Judith Fabray, and his daughter, Miss Lucy Fabray. What do you say you give Mr. Fabray your inaugural tarot card reading as part of the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus, hm?"

It isn't really a question.

Santana's stomach turns over at the mention of the cards, and quite suddenly she feels as if she has run up against a wall. Not just her mind but her heart, blood, and body resist the very notion of the cards. She doesn't want to read. She opens her mouth to say something but finds that no words come to her.

If Mr. Adams senses Santana's panic, he says nothing of it. Instead, he turns to Mr. Fabray, smirking his proud, lion smirk.

"She hails from the Eternal City, you know. She's fresh to the States, comes from gypsy stock that's been in the vicinity of Rome since the days of our good Lord. She's the best in the business. I have contacts on the Continent, always on the lookout for more talent. When I heard of her repute, I knew I must acquire her under my employ. I sent one of my gypsy fire eaters to procure her and bring her back to the States from Europe. Now she and the fire eater have married. She really is quite remarkable. The people love her."

(Santana didn't know any of those things about herself.)

The people won't love her if she goes through with this reading.

When Mr. Adams and Mr. Fabray look back to Santana, she quails, unsettled through to her bones, as if there's nothing stable left inside her. Her hands shake as she reaches for the tarot deck stacked neatly at the corner of her table, and the crowd gathered around the gazebo rustles, nervous with excitement. Santana feels like she might be ill.

If she refuses to read Mr. Fabray's cards in front of Mr. Adams, Mr. Adams will likely fire her, but if she reads Mr. Fabray's cards according to Mr. Adams' instructions, she will likely lose more than just her job anyway.

(She wishes her grandmother were here to pray _el Padre Nuestro_ for both her soul and Mr. Fabray's.)

(But then, of course, her grandmother wouldn't—)

(Not now, anyway.)

Briefly, Santana considers stacking the deck, removing the possibility for disaster, but then she hears her grandmother's voice in her memory, warning her with a sharp, hushed fury that she must never attempt to cheat the cards, no matter what they might say.

_No debes provocar el Sino, Santana, por el Sino es mayor que incluso la Muerte._

She can't stack the deck.

Santana looks up at Messrs. Adams and Fabray. Even if she were to run, as per her impulse at the moment, she knows that she would have nowhere to go. She can't refuse her employer his request—the rules won't allow it. If Mr. Adams requires Santana to do something, Santana must oblige him.

Mr. Fabray takes the seat at the front of Santana at the table. His family, Mr. Adams, and the assembled crowd all press in close to hear what Santana has to say to him. Mr. Fabray smirks at Santana, waiting. He has an oblong face with small, crinkled eyes, and a tall forehead, and he seems somehow bigger than life. Santana wonders if he weren't an athlete in his youth, with his broad build and inherent strength.

Her eyes flick to Quinn, who regards her with an unreadable tight-lipped expression, as impassive concerning her presence as if she and Santana had never met before.

Santana slides the cards apart, splitting the deck. She passes the deck to Mr. Fabray. "Will you please shuffle?" she asks, only barely remembering to mind her accent.

For a second, Mr. Fabray looks surprised that Santana would talk to him, but he takes the cards as she requests, offering a smirk back at Mr. Adams as he does so. He shuffles with a fleet, practiced hand, and Santana wonders if he might be a gambler. When he finishes his task to his satisfaction, he looks to Santana expectantly.

"Would you please cut the deck into three parts?" she asks, and he does so, almost carelessly.

Santana takes the cards back from him, biting her lips into her mouth, and then sets the cards onto the table, first the two stacks, and then the one. She draws a deep breath, feeling the crowd press in around her, curious and eager, and tries to remember what her grandmother told her following her first reading and what her father told her after her second. She feels a pang, thinking about the cards and the cottage. Fighting it down, she draws a card from the deck.

"This represents you," she says, laying the Emperor at the fore of the table near Mr. Fabray.

It's both the first and last safe card Santana will draw; all others carry a risk. Her hands tremble as she reaches for the first card of the spread, but her insides feel strangely still, like the dead air that precedes a thunderstorm.

A strange humor always wraps Santana as she reads tarot, and she can't know for certain if it comes from the cards or from her own self. Her father told her that cards were just cards, made from thick paper and ink, having only as much power as men ascribed to them, but her grandmother whispered different words to her.

_Las tarjetas tienen un poco del Diablo y un poco de los ángeles en ellos, querida._

_Te dirán secretos y responderán a tus preguntas. Ellos no mienten nunca._

Three columns of seven cards each comprise the typical tarot spread, fanning out like one of the strange, beautiful, grotesque, and vivid gardens of a Bosch painting, each column holding its own meaning, forming a part of a patchwork whole.

The first time Santana read tarot, her grandmother told her she had a gift for it, and Santana supposes that whatever strange humor envelops her as she reads may well be a gift, or at least a talent, however much it pains her to admit it.

Meanings manifest themselves to her though others might not perceive them. She sees the cards interplay with one another and understands how Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles can become something other than the crude implements they represent. She knows the characters of the Major Arcana as she does the heroes and villains of the fairy tales the brothers Grimm complied. She reads the cards like stories.

(Reading has always come easily to her.)

Santana lays the cards by column first, one to three, then by row, up to seven.

As she lays today's spread, she looks to Mr. Fabray in front of her and narrates to him as she goes, not yet telling him the meanings behind those things she sees—she must wait to know the whole story until she has read all the chapters—but what each column signifies, in itself. She holds her breath each time she deals a fresh card from stack to table, only exhaling once she sees the face, but never truly relaxing.

"This column represents the answers to your questions," she explains, setting down the first three cards.

She observes doubt, an attempt to make covert gains, and a pause in life before a finale, but mostly, and most troublingly, violence. Though none of the cards so far is the one Santana dreads, Santana still frets, for she knows that card could appear at any instant. If she must inevitably lay it down, she would rather do so at the first than near the end of the spread, for these earlier columns are the ones which indicate more immediate happenings and ethereal things, whereas the later columns depict the future.

She lays a second column, finding Swords, Wands, and Pentacles from the Minor Arcana.

None of the cards has betrayed her yet, though she can feel that strange humor building, buzzing like electricity; she tries to not think of it, though it troubles her in the same way a nagging memory would.

"This column represents your surroundings and things as they are."

In the third column, she sets down the seventh, eighth, and ninth cards out of twenty-one, two of them from the Major Arcana, the last from the Minor. In them, she sees the Page of Swords as someone who snoops about and spies, the Wheel of Fortune, and financial opportunities come in the form of the Ace of Pentacles.

"These are the figures which dwell in your dreams," she says softly.

Columns four, five, and six show Mr. Fabray the known, the unknown, and the immediate future and bring with them many Swords and Wands, plus visitors from the Major Arcana. Santana becomes increasingly tense but also increasingly entranced as she lays them. She begins to see the arc of a story playing out before her. The characters baffle her and so do the twists, but every now and then she catches a hint of something almost familiar, like gold glistening in a sunlit riverbed as a prospector's eyes pan over it.

And then Santana reaches her final column.

She holds her breath.

Out of twenty-one cards, she has three left to lay. She has yet to see the card she hates, though if she sees it now it will be worse than if she had seen it before. She feels the crowd tittering around her, oblivious to the possibility of danger, unaware of Santana's terrible gift and of what she dreads to discover.

She lays the Ten of Swords.

The Tower.

Death.

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't know for how much time she remains motionless, but it must be for long enough to alert Mr. Adams that something is wrong.<p>

"Madame?" Mr. Adams says over Mr. Fabray's shoulder. "Madame? Will you please kindly continue the reading?"

As he surveys the table, Mr. Adams spies the Death card for the first time. His lion smirk fades away, replaced by a hard look. He seems to understand that the deal is unfavorable, at least. The card stares up at him mockingly, just the same as it stares at Santana: a jangling skeleton robed in red and dancing, wearing an eternally contumelious smile.

(One ought not to deal Death to the man who wants to buy the circus.)

"What is the meaning of this?" Mr. Adams says harshly, pointing to the card as if Santana had laid it on purpose and intends it as some sort of vicious practical joke.

"I—," she stammers.

"Just let the girl give her reading, Jonah," Mr. Fabray says calmly, holding up a hand to pacify Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams acts furious, his mouth tightening and face turning pink under his dark beard, but he submits to Mr. Fabray's directive.

"Madame, if you will?" he says through gritted teeth, gesturing to the spread upon the table.

It takes all of Santana's willpower to tear her eyes from the card and look at Messrs. Adams and Fabray, who glare at her in fury and stare at her with a curious wonder, respectively. The people in the crowd chatter with excitement, as though they've come to the high point of the third act in a play. Santana perceives that Mr. Adams would have her pretend that the Death card means nothing except that all men must die in the end or something even more innocuous than that, but Santana knows better than to lie about tarot.

_Dime la verdad, Santana. ¿Qué ves?_

_Veo la Muerte._

_Así que es verdad: tú eres la malagüera._

(Mr. Fabray will die, if not today, then sometime soon.)

When she first laid the spread, Santana concerned herself with nothing except avoiding the Death card. Now, looking at her full handiwork for the first time all at once, Santana realizes that the spread is altogether inauspicious—and not just because it features Death.

Of fourteen possible Swords to the suit, Santana finds eight of them standing at attention, glinting in some future light, threats of violence, subterfuge, and rebellion whetted into their blades as they span the breadth of the table.

Amidst the intermittent Pentacles, Santana perceives the glint of coins half buried beneath detritus. From them, she intuits business dealings shrouded in doubt and untruths. She sifts the rubble of the fire-stormed Tower to find warnings of hard times, chaos, downfall, and ruin. She fears the Moon and sidesteps the speeding Chariot, which doubles as a steam engine.

How has the Page of Swords found his way into Mr. Fabray's dreams and what does he mean to spy upon while there?

Santana cowers beneath the Wheel of Fortune, which turns relentlessly overhead.

Passing through a forest of tall Wands which creak like wind-rocked trees, Santana precedes into the Major Arcana, where she encounters the wiliest and least trustworthy of figures, the Magician, wearing a tight-lipped and unreadable expression that could mean one thing or could mean another. He keeps company with the Fool, who hides his face, and a most mysterious High Priestess, crowned in lunar and astral light. Santana doesn't know these figures—or, if she does, she doesn't recognize them—but because they appear near the end of the story, she fears that they will play host to whatever Death awaits the unwitting Mr. Fabray.

At the end of it all, though she looks every which way for another conclusion, Santana finds only Death, no matter how she would avoid him for Mr. Fabray's sake. He greets Santana as though she is his friend, and Santana wonders if she might be just that to him, though she herself hates Death as she would the Devil.

(They know each other so well now.)

Santana tries to only tell Mr. Fabray the parts of the story that could shine, if polished.

"I see that business... concerns you," Santana says softly. She finds it easier to speak in her grandmother's accent now than she did before; these words belong to her grandmother. She was the first to set them inside Santana's mouth.

"Speak up!" someone shouts from the back of the crowd.

Santana sits bolt upright in her chair, as if bitten. She speaks louder, immediately obedient, suddenly more conscious of the rules than she has been since her last palm reading.

"You find yourself preoccupied with business," she says, ghosting her fingertips over the King and Ace of Pentacles, which neighbor each other at the bottoms of the second and third rows. "You have much on your mind concerning your dealings," she says, pointing to the Moon that overhangs everything Mr. Fabray knows. "You have already embarked on a new journey, and it will take you down..."

She wants to say _strange_ or _dangerous_ but knows she must not.

"Yes?" says Mr. Fabray, curious after her pause.

"... unexpected paths." She traces over the fifth column, where the three strange visitors from the Major Arcana dwell. "Three persons, unknown to you at present, will reveal themselves to you in time. They will change the course of your destiny."

She has nearly reached the seventh column; her hand hovers over the spread. She would end the reading here, but a sharp look from Mr. Adams tells her that she must not. He expects her to smooth over the Death card, as though it is simply a blunder she can laugh aside or for which she can apologize.

Santana's voice lowers again.

"Death awaits you," she says simply.

"When?" Mr. Adams demands.

Mr. Fabray looks appalled.

The crowd rustles, nervous to see Mr. Adams so cross with his newest employee, unnerved to hear serious talk of death at a midway attraction as part of a Sunday evening circus. Santana listens as whispers of distaste snake through the crowd. She also perceives the low titter of a perverse thrill; the crowd likes and hates it at the same time that she has told such an important man as Mr. Fabray he will die.

Santana wishes she could say _Thirty years from now_ or _Someday_, but she knows that she cannot.

_No me mientas, Santana. ¿Qué ves?_

Her mouth hangs open and she doesn't speak.

(Santana swears that even if Mr. Adams allows her to keep her job, she will never read the cards again, not after all of this.)

Mr. Fabray appears thoroughly bewildered and upset, Santana's seriousness snuffing out the last hints of levity from his face. His jaw slackens, and he eyes the Death card like it might scratch him. Mr. Adams stirs at his side and the crowd rustles again. Santana fears that Mr. Adams will fire her on the spot.

Just then, an amused-sounding laugh comes from behind Mr. Fabray.

"Daddy!" Quinn says airily. "Mr. Adams! Why ever would it matter? The gypsy girl can have her fun, but at the end of the day, her silly little cards are just a game. The good Lord is greater than all of this black magic and hocus pocus anyway! You're in no more danger than the rest of us, Daddy. Heavens!"

Santana can't help but note that Quinn's whole manner seems affected and false. Still, she feels glad to see both Mr. Adams and Mr. Fabray soften at Quinn's words, uneasy smiles replacing their previous displeasure. Quinn laughs again, and they laugh, too, Mrs. Fabray joining with them and then the rest of the crowd, as well. At first, everyone laughs nervously but then with enjoyment. Quinn's statement takes slow hold over the throng, eventually transforming Santana's gravity into a joke.

Mr. Fabray looks over Santana again, and, suddenly, because Quinn suggested it, he seems to regard everything Santana has told him as being all in fun.

"This girl does put on a good show, Jonah," he says approvingly, winking at Mr. Adams. "She certainly had us going, didn't she?"

He wraps a doting hand around Quinn's wrist and tugs her over to him like a little toy boat on a string. Quinn smiles at her father, but her face seems as guarded as it did earlier in the day when Santana and Brittany first met her at the trisection of tents. Mr. Fabray runs his thumb over Quinn's forearm, admiring her as a most prized possession.

"My Lucy is such a clever girl," Mr. Fabray says.

"She certainly is," Mr. Adams agrees quickly. He looks at Santana, seeming indifferent to her now, though also pleased that the trouble she started has resolved itself so neatly. "And our Madame Rossetti lives up to her reputation as a most exciting fortuneteller, does she not?"

"Indeed she does!" Mr. Fabray consents, tipping his top hat to Santana from across the table.

The crowd breaks into applause at his word, suddenly very entertained. Some whistle, others shout "Good show! Good show!" with the ladies giggling and the men whooping. If Santana didn't still feel so awful about the truth in the cards, she would feel good at having won so much approval. As it is, she can scarcely find it in herself to care that her job seems safe, for the moment.

(Santana will soon learn that everyone likes a bit of death, as long as it's harmless and has to do with someone else.)

As if on cue, the bell signaling the end of the evening fair rings out, loud and bright, over the midway. The crowd disperses more quickly than Santana can believe. Mr. Adams shepherds the Fabrays away with him just as Ken appears on the sidelines of the gazebo, come to fetch Santana, presumably to take her on to perform in her very first show.

As Quinn departs, she sends Santana a last look over her shoulder, her face as tight-lipped and unreadable as ever. Santana wonders if she should thank Quinn for rescuing the reading, should she ever have the chance, or simply hate Quinn for hating her. She settles on a thankful sort of sadness.

(Santana wishes she could believe in Jesus.)

(She wishes she could believe that cards are only ink and paper.)

* * *

><p>Santana would appreciate more time to think on what had just happened with the cards and Mr. Fabray, but if there's one thing she learned since yesterday, it's that the circus waits for no one.<p>

In one minute, Santana sits in her gazebo, foretelling the death of a man she hardly knows before a crowd of fascinated strangers, and, in the next minute, Ken stands in front of Santana, commanding her to gather up her cards and tie them in the peacock-colored tablecloth, which item will be her responsibility to keep from now on. Santana follows Ken's instructions, tying the cloth like a knapsack, while Ken barks at her to hurry up and then makes her chase him in a beeline to the big top.

As Ken bustles toward the main show, he checks his pocket watch and curses the time under his breath: nearly half past seven. Despite the late hour, the sun maintains a high position in the sky, its light still white and the sky still blue behind it, without any hint of dusk. The temperature may have dropped somewhat since the afternoon, but, if it has, Santana finds it difficult to tell as much. She feels so hot and slick with sweat that she thinks she might never cool down again.

Ken moves at a grueling pace, walking quickly enough that Santana must jog to keep up with him. Other circus performers flank Ken and Santana, all headed to the same destination as they are. With most of the fairgoers crowding into the queue to enter the big top, the circus folk have no trouble skirting the public, and especially not as they round the curve of the tent. They pass the box office booth, slipping into the shadows that span the gulf between the side and main shows, and duck beyond the twin dressing tents, coming upon a section of open space adjacent to the elephant pen and the backdrop of the big top.

Here, Santana finds a makeshift outdoor backstage area furnished with low benches and myriad stools. The area boasts open barrels of drinking water with long-stemmed tin ladles hooked at their rims and tall, white fabric canopies providing shade and the most rudimentary shelter. A small fire simmers at the center of the open space, which sits oriented towards the back of the big top. Several wagons and small tents line the peripheries.

It seems as if half the circus already populates the space, with men, women, and children seated and standing in little groups here and there, helping each other to apply last minute make up and limber up limbs in preparation for the big performance.

At first, the relatively small population of the backstage—less than one-hundred performers, in all—surprises Santana, but then, peering around the back of the big top, Santana sees a second backstage area at the other side of the pitch, where other performers circulate. It also occurs to Santana then that of the nearly five-hundred circus employees, more than half of them are supes, seamstresses, kitchen girls, and other nonperformers. All in all, she supposes that the performers themselves only number somewhere around two-hundred souls altogether.

Of all these two-hundred people, there is only one person whom Santana longs to see.

Santana scans the rabble of powder-faced clowns, Chinese acrobats, and other performers, hoping to find Brittany in angel-white somewhere amongst the company. Though her eyes pick out several blonde persons, including Sam and his father, Santana doesn't see Brittany anywhere in the backstage area. She wonders if perhaps Brittany and her father are with the other group. Could Santana go to the other backstage area to find Brittany and enter the circus from there?

She doesn't get the chance to ask Ken if she has permission to move to the other site before someone calls her name in a loud voice.

"Santana!"

She turns to see Rachel Berry waving to her over the hubbub, Puck at Rachel's side, both of them toiling with their fire implements. Santana groans before she can stop herself; she wants nothing to do with either Rachel Berry or Noah Puckerman at the moment.

Unfortunately, as they must all perform together, Santana knows she has no choice but to heed Rachel's call. Reluctantly, Santana joins her gypsy companions on the edge of the backstage area, setting her tablecloth knapsack down alongside their gear.

"Hey, ladybird! How'd the fair treat you?" Puck asks, and, for once, Santana feels glad that he doesn't actually wait for her to answer him.

Her small gladness fades when Puck speaks next, though.

"Take this," he says, handing her a flail. "Here's how it's gonna work: the show bell will ring in about five minutes. They'll bring in the elephants"—Puck nods towards the empty elephant pen behind them—"and the clowns'll take the stage. Ken'll ring the entrance bell exactly seven minutes after that and that's our cue."

"We stagger going into the tent. Ken will wave us in. We take the middle entrance and fan left, toward Ring One," Rachel adds in a bossy tone, nodding towards the opposite side of the tent from where they sit now, as if Santana knows enough to make sense of her instructions.

Puck grabs the wick on the end of Santana's flail and wets it in kerosene from a canister. "Light your flail before we head into the tent, but be careful not to get it too near the tent flaps as we go inside or else the big top'll go up like a Roman candle. You can bum flames off my staff if you want, so as to save matches. When we get into the big top, it's simple, just like Rachel says: walk on a one, two, three count to the front of the ring that's farthest to the left. You remember from the matinee, right?"

Actually, so much has happened since the morning that Santana remembers next to nothing from the earlier show, except for Brittany in brilliant white, the most captivating person on the floor. Santana opens her mouth to say that she doesn't recollect the logistics of the matinee well enough to personally recreate them, but Puck doesn't wait for Santana to respond to his query.

"Steer clear of the other performers," he warns. "And keep about eight feet of space between you and Rachel. Stop walking when Rachel stops walking, and hold your mark. Just keep twirling that flail. We stick in the ring until the end of the song, and then make a quick exit. There'll be buckets at the back of the ring that the clowns put up on their entrance. You can douse your flail on the way out of the tent. Once we get back out here, you can put up your heels for a while. We're the tenth act."

"And I'm the eleventh," Rachel says smugly.

Santana's head reels, positively flooded with all the new information. If she manages to make it through even this first appearance under the big top lights without catching herself or someone else on fire, it will be a bonafide miracle.

After giving Santana their instructions, Puck and Rachel go back to outfitting their fire implements and straightening their costumes. As they do so, Santana pretends to busy herself with making sure her scarves stay securely fastened at her belt, though really she hasn't any idea as to what task she ought to be about.

A blend of smoke-choke and earthy coffee scent hangs in the air. The Changs pass a steel pot between them again, same as they did the first time Santana saw them. Sam and his father sit rapt in what looks like a serious conversation, their funny clown faces furrowed into unfunny looks of deep consideration. If not for all the strange clothes and props scattered amongst the assembled company, this gathering would resemble a town picnic.

(In a way, Santana supposes that that's exactly what it is.)

Too soon, the five minute bell rings, and Santana turns to see Ken holding the instrument, standing near the entrance to the tent. A swell of music and fanfare sounds from inside the big top. Sam, his father, the trilby tramp, and the other clowns leap to their feet and hurry to the middle ground between this backstage area and the one further down the way. When they reach their mark, two supes peel back the tent flaps using hooked poles, creating an entryway into the big top. The clowns linger for a second, breathless and smiling, before rushing inside the tent in a gaggle of laughter and hi-jinks. Santana feels a thrill watching them go.

A second later, she hears the big top erupt into cheers of revelry.

It hardly seems possible that Santana will make her own circus debut in just a few minutes' time. Briefly, she wonders what her father and grandmother might say, knowing what has become of their little Santana since their passing, but then she feels a pang of hurt low in her breast.

"You ready to go, ladybird?" Puck asks, cutting through Santana's thoughts.

He gestures for her to start walking with him and Rachel over to the same tent entrance through which the clowns just disappeared. Vaguely, Santana wonders where the elephants disappeared to, but before she can even form her question, Puck has a match between his fingers, which he strikes against a small plug of flint he produces from the red sash tied at his waist. As the match ignites, Puck grins, devil-wild.

"Ready or not," Puck says, lighting his own staff before reaching for first Rachel's and then Santana's flails to share the flames.

The performance bell rings.

* * *

><p>Until this moment in her life, Santana has never had any reason to fear that an elephant might trample her, but after Puck lights Santana's flail and Ken hustles the gypsies through the tent flaps after the contortionists, Santana finds herself stumbling through a patch of darkness and then trying to cross the direct pathway of three massive African pachyderms.<p>

The animals look even bigger now than they did in the parades out of Tekamah and into Worthington; Santana passes close enough to them to smell the processed grass and dust on their coriaceous skin and see the mingled danger and sagacity in their red-brown eyes.

While the other circus performers move deftly toward the fore of the big top, running on their perfect, machinated clockwork, Santana finds herself stutter-stepping, not sure how or where to move, baffled by all the sights and sounds surrounding her, and terrified that she'll catch her own skirts or someone else's on fire. She has never felt more overwhelmed in her life. She shuffles past the elephants, awfully aware of her own smallness and breakability.

Being part of the circus is nothing like watching it from the stands.

The band's playing sounds considerably louder on the floor than it does in the audience and if the grand parade looked chaotic from above, it becomes pure pandemonium for a person standing in the midst of it. Santana sidesteps a clown and skitters past a man on stilts. Vaguely, she recalls that Puck mentioned something about walking on a three count, but simply moving forward is all that she can manage to make herself do at the moment; she can scarcely keep her wits about her, let alone hold a beat.

Santana does little more with her flail than simply hold it at arm's length from herself and swing it lightly back and forth like a gentle pendulum, trying to keep her person as far away from the actual fire as possible. Her heart beats in her throat, and she thinks _Oh God_ with every step, panicked that she'll go up like a human torch with the slightest mistake or misstep. The flames at the end of the chain wrap like an ever-shifting fist around the wick, with fingers of red, orange, yellow, blue, and iridescent white.

Amidst the movement, color, and sounds of the circus on parade, Santana catches sight of Rachel, who gives her a sharp look.

_Hurry up!_ Rachel mouths, gesturing for Santana to keep pace at her side.

Santana falters, as dizzy as if someone has spun her around in circles. The circus orbits and constellates around her, pulsing with detail and whirling with motion on her every side, casting her as the axis to her own harlequin universe.

"Santana!" Rachel shouts, voice cutting but barely discernible over the thunder of the parade.

Only at the sound of Rachel's voice does Santana realize that she had stopped walking.

Rachel flashes her a scathing look and motions again for Santana to join her toward the front of the ring. Embarrassed and startled, Santana stumbles forward, her flail wagging ahead of her like a puppy with an excited tail, flames twisting over it in serpentine braids. Santana halts when Rachel does, standing a few yards away from Rachel while Puck cuts a final circle around them, tossing and spinning his staff with a jackal kind of joy.

For the first time since entering the big top, Santana looks up at the crowd.

(Santana didn't know what to expect, finding herself before a real, live audience for the first time, but she certainly hadn't imagined this.)

Immediately, she feels in awe of it, reverenced.

Over a thousand eyes look to her and over a thousand hands clap for her performance. She knows the audience really applauds for the full circus, not just for her, and especially not considering that she constitutes the worst and least part of the spectacle before them. Even so, she gets caught up in the rapture of the moment—of the sound and wonder of over five-hundred people cheering in her direction. A thrill blooms over her skin and in her heart and lungs.

(Santana finds something worth keeping for the second time in as many days.)

Suddenly, Santana thinks she knows why Puck smiled so widely during the matinee; there's something powerful and brilliant in the crowd. She looks over to Puck to check his face and finds him briefly illuminated in angry red light from his staff as he swallows a pull of flames and then spews them high into the air in a spate.

Santana gasps.

"Santana!" Rachel snaps, her voice sharp even though she smiles cloyingly at the audience. "Don't just stand there! The song changed!"

Santana hadn't noticed.

By the time Santana remembers to move, Rachel and Puck have already retreated towards the buckets lining the ring. When she jolts to follow them, the snap in her motion nearly scares the flame from her flail to her skirt.

She stops dead, terrified.

In that split instant, the flame snarls then recoils, missing Santana's clothing by just an inch. Santana's heart clenches in her chest.

"Santana!" Rachel calls to her, already having doused her own flail, motioning wildly for Santana to join her on the edge of the ring to do the same.

Nearly all the other performers have vacated the stage, leaving Santana alone in the spotlight. Santana waits a beat before her pulse returns. She hears the crowd calling for her. When she starts to move again, she feels as jittery as the struck sting on an instrument, vibrant with nerves.

She catches a flash of blonde and white retreating into the darkness at the back of the big top as she glances toward the back of the tent.

(For a second, she forgets everything except Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.)

"Santana!" Rachel hisses again.

She jolts.

* * *

><p>Rachel starts lecturing Santana before they even emerge from the big top, walking at Santana's shoulder and nagging straight into Santana's ear.<p>

"You can't just stop moving when you're on stage!" Rachel scolds as they pass into the darkness at the back of the tent and emerge through the tent flaps to the outdoors, their eyes shuttering with the rapid change in brightness. "And you have to be more careful with your flail! You could have burned yourself!" she says, as if Santana didn't know.

Puck waits for them at the center of the backstage area, leaning on his staff. He cringes as Santana and Rachel approach him, and Santana isn't sure if he does so because she disappointed him with her poor performance just now or because he doesn't want to involve himself in Rachel's diatribe.

"And, really, Santana, if you can't keep count to the music, at least try to keep up with me! We're supposed to have parallel choreography! If you don't keep up, it makes it impossible for Noah to circle us, doesn't it, Noah?"

Puck looks caught.

His eyes flick between Santana and Rachel and an uneasy look passes over his face. He knows that Santana botched the performance as well as Santana and Rachel do, but he also doesn't seem to want to yell at Santana and risk upsetting her again, like he did earlier in the day when they practiced her palm readings. After a split second's deliberation, Puck apparently decides which one of his two pretty ladies scares him the most. He shrugs.

"It was her first performance, Rachel," he says, apologizing on Santana's behalf. "Lay off her, why don't you? She didn't know any better. She weren't raised at the circus like you and me—"

"Exactly!" Rachel fumes. "She isn't like us, Noah! She doesn't possess any of the necessary skills to perform in our act, and apparently she also lacks the common sense to stay out of the way of everyone else with her lighted flail. Really, it's a safety issue, which is to say nothing of the fact that she's wasting the money of our patrons, who've paid to see world-class live entertainment! Honestly, given our precarious situation at present, Noah, I would think that you of all people would understand how very vital it is for Santana to contribute to the circus rather than detract from it. We can't afford to have her fouling up our performances, and especially not during such a simple part of the act as the grand parade!"

Puck's eyebrows knit together, and he offers Santana a sorry look, but says nothing to stop Rachel, apparently deciding that it's not in either his or Santana's best interests to interrupt her now that she's gotten herself going.

Rachel proceeds to harangue Santana about the dangers of irresponsible fire-handling and the importance of always carrying on with the show for a full ten minutes while Puck simply leans against his staff and looks at the ground, by all appearances immensely interested in the crickets crawling through the grass at his toes.

For her part, Santana bites her tongue, feeling shame and fear blended with indignation and annoyance. Of course it's easy for Rachel Berry to say that fire-handling is a rudimentary job and that circus performance should be intuitive for anyone with even a shred of Rachel's own natural talent because—from what Santana gathers—Rachel grew up in the circus and has performed before live audiences since the day she could walk. Santana, on the other hand, had never even encountered so many people all together in one place before seeing the evening audience today and feels as obtuse and ill-equipped at the circus as Hank Morgan in Camelot.

After issuing Santana a final stern warning to mind her flails when it comes time for the gypsy act, Rachel draws a deep breath, beleaguered. "Now if you'll kindly excuse me," she says, as though Santana and Puck have detained her instead rather than she them, "I must go practice my vocal exercises to warm up my voice for the eleventh act."

She turns sharply on her heel and stalks off towards the peripheries of the backstage.

(Santana wonders why Rachel still feels the need to give her voice a warm up, considering that she just exercised it for a full ten minutes straight.)

As Rachel walks away, Santana feels something crumble inside her. She already knew her own failures well enough without having Rachel recite them to her like a litany. Santana slumps where she stands, Rachel's full reprimand still ringing in her ears.

"Don't mind her, ladybird," Puck says, chucking at Santana's elbow as he sidles up beside her. "You haven't really joined Mr. Adams' circus until you've had Rachel Berry criticize you. She'd tell the sky it wasn't blue enough if she thought it had gotten in the way of her performance. She don't mean no harm, though."

He offers Santana an encouraging look.

"Yeah," Santana says quietly, not really feeling comforted.

(Everything Rachel said is true.)

Puck senses the defeat in Santana's voice and seems to dislike it, or at least find it uncomfortable. He scrunches up his brow. "Want to watch Will fend off the clowns?" he asks. His lips shift into a wily grin. "It looks different from the back way."

Without waiting for Santana to answer, Puck leads Santana just beyond the makeshift borders of the backstage, not near the entrance flaps but rather to a certain irregular section along the curve of the tent.

Whereas the rest of the tent wall seems uniformly spread, this particular area sports an aperture in the canvas which forms a long, tall triangular opening leading directly into the big top. Someone has folded the canvas back along this opening and held it in place using a sizable rock, tacking it down at the fringe.

Little children—including a towheaded boy no older than ten who looks quite a lot like Sam Evans—clutter around the area, some playing with tatty corncob dolls or marbles, others pounding out patty-cake on each other's palms. As Santana and Puck draw closer to the opening, Santana realizes that some of the children have their heads peeked through the hole, watching the circus from the outside looking in.

The children part to allow Puck and Santana to join them at the seam.

"You can watch through here," Puck says. He ducks his head through the open slat himself and then reemerges, smirking his devil smirk. He motions for Santana to follow his example.

"Won't the audience be able to see us?" Santana asks skeptically.

"Nope," Puck assures. "It's so dark at the back of the big top that no one could see you even if you waved to 'em. You can watch the whole show from back here—and the nice part is that Ken won't even make you buy a ticket."

Santana laughs, and, weak although her laughter sounds, Puck seems pleased.

"Come on, ladybird. Give it a try," he encourages her, holding the flap back so that Santana can look.

Cautiously, Santana follows Puck's directive, leaning forward to peer through the slat with all the care and quiet of a mother checking her sleeping babe in its crib from the frame of the nursery door.

As Santana sticks her head inside the tent, the world shifts from light to dark; the bright bravado of circus music replaces the outdoor din of the tittering circus company. Her vision adjusts and she finds herself looking out at the rightmost ring, from her perspective, the center ring off several yards to the left of her.

Just as Puck promised, Will the Ringmaster stands in the center ring, the clowns already harassing him. Mr. Evans dodges away from Will, holding his hat, while the other clowns paw at things they really oughtn't to touch, like the ladders leading up to the trapeze platforms, aping Will behind his back, making fun of his gait and exasperated motions.

The stage lights cast long shadows behind the performers and halo everyone in white, painting the audience as a single blur of pink and white and black and brown and blonde. The act seems more immediate and somehow more tragic with Santana watching it from the ground instead of the stands now; though Will chases the clowns with exaggerated motions, he seems strangely downtrodden and Santana feels sad to see him.

Now that Santana doesn't have Rachel yelling at her, she hears it when the signal bell rings over the backstage just as Will manages to retrieve his hat from Mr. Evans and drive the clowns back out of the big top. Right on cue, the Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie trots into the tent through a set of side tent flaps that Santana spots at the poles of the oblong big top. Santana gasps, as do some of the children around her.

"I'm gonna go set down, ladybird," Puck says, apparently happy that Santana finds the circus so deeply interesting. "I'll come get you when it's time for us to take the stage."

Despite what Puck told her, Santana finds that watching the circus from behind is not dissimilar to watching the circus from the front, once she becomes accustomed to her new vantage point: the clowns are still amusing imps, the ladies on horseback are still haughty and regal, and Jesse St. James still plays the braggadocio, his big cats limping along, confined in fetters.

The only true difference Santana finds in watching the circus from the backstage as opposed to from the stands is that, from this ground level, she can spot the sleights more easily.

As Puck told Santana when he trained her to twirl her flail, so much of live performance has to do with distractions and manipulating the attention of the audience. Watching the circus from the backdrop, Santana finds it easy to see through the tricks, probably because the performers direct these tricks at the paying gilly audience in front of them rather than at the freeloading insider audience at their backs.

Santana sees now when she didn't before the dousing buckets the clowns left at the fore of the main ring. She also notices it right away when the supes loitering at the sides of the tent open the flaps to wheel the jungle cat wagon to the edge of the ring so they can release the beasts for their act. She sees Will teasing the crowd, drawing their eyes to him as the jugglers and contortionists sneak in and out of the shadows, making entrances and exits at the back entryway to the big top. She even notices how much of the Amazing Hiram's magic is really just choreography and cleverly hidden latches that the quadroon manservant fastens and unfastens at intervals.

Strangely, knowing the secret mechanisms behind the show doesn't make the circus seem any less magical to Santana. Instead, it causes her to feel even more impressed with the deftness of the performers and the cleverness of show business than she did before.

(So much more interesting is the person with secrets to keep than the person who has no secrets and who is too dull to think of any.)

Another bell rings.

"Ladybird," Puck says, coming to fetch Santana. "That's our cue."

Though watching the circus temporarily distracted Santana from thinking about her previous failure on the stage, Puck's words remind her of it in an instant. The same anxiety Santana felt before returns to her in a wave.

With mounting dread, Santana follows Puck away from the aperture in the tent canvas back to where Rachel sits, priming the flails for Puck to light them. As Puck distributes the implements and sets fire to their wicks, Santana starts to tremble, and the more she trembles, the more she frets, worried that her shaking hands will cause an accident once she holds the fire in her grasp.

(The whole city of Chicago once burned down because someone had an accident.)

Santana's breath grows thready as Puck passes her flail to her.

"Don't ruin this," Rachel admonishes, issuing Santana a stern look of warning.

With Puck as their leader, the gypsies troop over to the big top entrance, Ken waiting at the flaps to usher them inside. Overhead, the sky has assumed the first twinges of twilight, the sun stretching its light against the white tops of the tents scattered across the circus, glinting against the tin handles of the ladles arching out of the water barrels.

"One, two, ready, go!" Ken counts, waving the gypsies through the open fly.

(Santana leaves her breath behind.)

As per what Puck explained to Santana earlier in the day, the gypsies enter the big top under cover of darkness, with only their implements to light their way. They come to a halt at the center of the ring with their backs to the audience, Rachel and Santana standing side by side about ten feet away from one another with Puck flanking Santana on the far side.

Will announces their presence to the audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen, from the darkest regions of Europe, I present to you a trio of gypsies most skilled in the arts of pyrotechnic artistry! To them, the touch of flame feels as but a friendly caress! They feed upon fire and bathe themselves in brimstone! Don't be alarmed by what you are about to see. Our gypsies are fire-proof! Watch them tame the flames!"

The lights go up and the band strikes a quavering note to start the song.

"Okay," Puck mutters to the group.

Santana doesn't move.

* * *

><p>Though Rachel and Puck begin to dance immediately, Santana remains motionless, her back still turned to the audience. <em>Move<em>, she commands herself, but her feet disobey her. _Move_, she thinks, but it seems as if her heart is the only thing in her willing to run, keeping relentless pace beneath her breast.

For a second, Santana sees only the back of the big top tent splayed before her, shrouded in darkness and hears the music playing, Rachel and Puck cavorting freely around her, progressing toward the fore of the ring, but then Puck circles into Santana's view, a stricken expression on his face.

_What are you doing?_ he mouths. _Dance!_

The crowd murmurs, picking up on the fact that Santana's immobility isn't part of the act. All the same, Santana remains still as a statue, unable to even reply to Puck. Her flail hangs at arm's length in front of her, limp and mocking, daring her to disturb it.

(She can't.)

Puck makes another circle.

"Ladybird!" he urges, but Santana just stares at him, helpless, the flail's chain coiled around her hands. She watches the flame twist itself into ribbon knots along its wick and feels more useless than she ever has before in her life.

Puck's face hardens, and suddenly he darts to her, snatching the flail out of her hands with a single rough yank. Though he doesn't mean for it to happen, the chain rips at the skin on the back of Santana's knuckles and pinches her thumbs between its links, causing Santana to yelp in pain. In the next instant, Puck wields the flail with his left hand while continuing to spin his staff in his right hand.

With a feline agility, Puck spins to the front of the ring, where he heaves the flail in a might loop around his head, then plunges its wick into one of the waiting buckets, extinguishing its flames in a puff of steam to the wild applause of the audience. He casts a scornful glance back at Santana, his eyes meeting hers.

"Dance!" he commands and his voice is so sharp and mean that Santana actually flinches into action, her feet shifting from their spot, her hands dropping to her sides.

Santana has never danced before, except around the parlor with her father when she was a little girl, standing on the toes of his shiny, black Brogan shoes, holding onto his fingers with her whole hands, laughing while her grandmother played songs from San Juan for them on the piano.

The music that the band performs now sounds nothing like Abuela's _danza_.

Santana thinks of what Puck said earlier about Rachel hiding her repetitions behind the largeness of a gesture. She thinks of her grandmother, balling the corners of her skirt in her hands and rumpling it in a rhythm, joining Santana and Santana's father at the center of the parlor. Santana looks to Rachel, rolling her hips in pretty circles in time to the strange music.

Santana dances.

She has no training for dancing on her own, but she can count a beat, at least, thanks to her musical training, and does so, finding the three-three tempo and slipping into it as one would into a bath that is too cold for her, hesitatingly and not knowing the best way.

Santana attempts to mimic Rachel, stirring her hips in little rounds, kicking up her feet at intervals. She moves toward the fore of the ring, ruffling her skirt with her hand, hiding her inexperience behind a veil of waving petticoats and the largeness of her motions. She knows her dance isn't a real one, but hopes that the crowd will take it for something belonging to gypsy culture. She looks different enough from Puck and Rachel that maybe the audience can accept that her dance is different than their dance, that she is different from everyone.

She reaches the fore of the ring as the music swells and pauses to watch Rachel and Puck in their perfect synchronization, Rachel swinging her flail one last time, Puck bringing his staff to his mouth, visage swarthier than ever against the ruddy firelight as he blows a plume of fire high into the air. The audience cheers, and Santana finally exhales.

Puck and Rachel extinguish their flames in a trice, sending jets of steam up from the buckets tucked alongside the circumference of the ring. "Come on," Puck grunts, stalking over to Santana and grabbing her brusquely by the wrist. The next thing Santana knows, Puck pulls her down into something between a bow and a curtsy. The crowd roars, open-mouthed and appreciative.

(Their applause isn't for her.)

Before Santana can either say or do anything, Puck hustles her off to the back of the tent, leaving Rachel alone to perform the eleventh act.

They emerge into the outdoors to find the sky tinged with gloaming. The smoke from the small fire at the center of the backstage shows up more vividly against the atmosphere than it did before. Some of the younger clowns, including Sam and the trilby tramp, have started a game of euchre going—much quieter than Puck and his friends' raucous play on the train—beneath one of the canopies. They sit puffing pipes on the ground and perched along the benches, looking up when Puck and Santana exit the big top, smiling at Puck and regarding Santana warily. Some of them seem to remember her outburst from earlier today.

Before Santana can make it two steps out of the tent flaps, Ken appears in front of her, his face redder and blotchier than she has ever seen it before, his nostrils flaring with fury. He steps directly in front of Santana, blocking her way, and gets to within a foot of her, encroaching on her space. The acrid stench of his sweat and foul breath overwhelms her, and she nearly gags.

"What the hell was that?" Ken bellows, spit flying from his lips along with the invective.

Everybody flinches and Santana most of all.

"Ken! Ken, I got this—!" Puck starts to say, but Ken won't hear it.

Instead, Ken grabs Santana's wrist and wrenches her away from Puck's side, jerking Santana forward and away from the big top so he can yell at her properly without anyone hearing him through the open flap. Santana's shoulder flares with pain, and her wrist feels near to breaking from the pressure of Ken's grasp. Ken snaps Santana to a whip stop in the center of the backstage, just beside the fire, seething like a provoked bull. The whole company sits circled around them.

He shouts at her in a most brutal voice.

"Listen up, little missus! I have never seen such a chickenshit performance in my life! You could have got yourself killed, seizing up like that! What if Puck had run into you? Now I know Mr. Adams likes to help his boys, so he'll take on anybody's wife or brother or cocker span'l, but you mark me: I don't need no damned nigger gypsy making a goddamned fool of herself on my stage! I'll have you fired before the matinee tomorrow!"

(No matter how many times Santana hears that word in reference to herself, it never feels like anything less than a knife blow.)

For a second, the echo of Ken's shouting rings out over the backstage, and everyone shrinks beneath it, Santana most of all. Her insides turn cold, and her mouth falls open. A choked breath tumbles from her lips, come all the way from the bottom of her lungs, and her mouth remains open afterwards. Tears spring to her eyes, not just because of Ken's words but because of everything. Her throat tightens.

"Ladybird," Puck says, reaching out to her, looking at her with so much pity and concern that she simply can't stand it. His fingertips brush her shoulder, and she recoils as if burned.

Before anyone can say another word to her, Santana runs.

* * *

><p>Santana runs without thought, her feet falling hard against the grass, her skirts strangling her legs with intent to bring her down. Overhead, the sky bruises, darkness chasing Santana from east to west as she passes white tent upon white tent upon white tent, her own breathing wet and heavy in her ears, audible above the crush of the grass beneath her feet and the fading circus sounds that fade ever farther over her shoulder.<p>

She runs further than she has ever run before in her life until she breathes like a storm and a low hurt throbs in her belly, just above her hipbone. The inside of her mouth tastes cotton-dry and like wind, and her throat, eyes, and chest all burn, as if she had swallowed Puck's fire.

(You always hear of people running away to join the circus. You never hear of anyone running away to get out of it.)

The circus camp blurs around Santana as tears fill her eyes, but it's only after she collapses on the ground that she truly allows herself to cry, the same sob she suppressed earlier in the day finally springing free from her throat. She draws her hands to her face, pressing them around her mouth and cheeks. A pain that has nothing to do with how Ken manhandled her stabs through her shoulders.

Though Santana hates how childish her voice sounds through her cries and hates herself for crying in the first place, she can't bring herself to stop crying once she starts.

She cries for the past several weeks, for her grandmother and father for the first time since their funerals, and for the fact that they aren't here to tell her to conduct herself bravely and sensibly today. She cries for the happiness she left behind at the bachelor cottage. She cries for her being all alone, even with Puck as her guardian. She cries for the meanness of the circus folk and her own inability to mind the rules. She cries remembering Puck's hot, ugly kisses on her skin. She cries because fire frightens her to her bones. She cries because Ken shouted at her. She cries for the word he called her. She cries because everything Ken said is true.

(She cries for herself, most of all.)

Her sobs wrack her, curdling up from deep inside.

She chokes as if on shards of cut glass.

Eventually her voice breaks, and then she weeps silently, her hands still drawn to her face, which stings, clammy and swollen from tears.

"Stop it," she commands herself and wipes her eyes angrily along the flaring sleeve of her gypsy blouse. She coughs and forces down more tears. "Stop it," she says again, furious with herself and everyone. She wills away the weak feeling inside of her, replacing smallness with hardness, and chides herself for her own fragility.

(Does Ma Jones cry every time someone calls her that word? Did Puck cry when he failed during the performance that injured him back in New York?)

With her eyes cleared of tears for the first time since she collapsed from running, Santana takes note of her surroundings and realizes that she has inadvertently brought herself to the same trisection of tents where she stopped to hem the equestriennes' skirts earlier in the day.

In the distance, she hears the sounds of voices and movement. The sky splays, an even lavender dark now, quick, thin clouds rolling over the moon and distant stars. The voices draw ever closer to Santana, and she knows that the circus has dispersed for the evening. The company makes its way back to camp.

Santana sits stalk still, waiting in the dark.

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't know for how long she stays in the darkness, only that the whole circus passes by her on either side without seeing her. She sits frog-legged, with her palms flat on the grass, her shoulders hunched. Eventually, she closes her eyes, drowning out the distant sound of laughter and talk. She knows that, eventually, she'll have to return to Puck and face whatever punishment he has for her for running away.<p>

(Rules are rules are rules are rules and don't change no matter how hard you cry.)

A low, sweet voice comes to her through the darkness.

"Now, don't be scared, darlin', but I'm walking up behind you."

Despite the directive, Santana startles, sitting bolt upright. She turns to see Brittany approaching her through the darkness.

When Santana first met Brittany, she somehow thought that Brittany was a daytime girl, so gilded and tied to the sunshine that she would always look best in the mornings and high afternoons. Now Santana sees that Brittany is just as beautiful under cover of night as she is at any other time of day.

The earlier clouds obscuring the moon have mostly vanished, and blue moonlight trickles down, its beams threading through Brittany's pretty hair and catching at the whites of her eyes. Brittany has already changed from her circus costume back into her tatty blue sundress. She carries a mess dish and a cup in her hands, her figure a study in indigo and shadow.

Santana gasps.

(Will Brittany always surprise her like this?)

"I thought about singing, maybe, to let you know I was coming up on you," Brittany admits in her artless way. "But then you looked so pretty that I forgot."

Brittany walks over to where Santana sits in the grass, setting down gracefully beside her. She doesn't bother to rearrange her tatty skirt over her legs; Santana can see her pale kneecaps and ankles exposed to the night.

"Hi," Brittany says, as if she hasn't already greeted Santana.

"Hi," Santana says back, forgetting to not stare.

"I brought you some supper, in case you're hungry," Brittany says, indicating the mess dish and cup in her hands.

Santana says nothing, but watches Brittany with the most intense and longing interest she has ever felt before in her life. Brittany doesn't seem to mind Santana's silence. She hands the dish and cup over to Santana and offers Santana an encouraging smile. All of a sudden, Santana feels warm under the cool, blue moonlight. Her shoulders lift. She breathes.

"Thanks," she says stupidly, looking down at her meal, which consists of gravy, grits, and a single biscuit. She hadn't realized she felt hungry until this very minute.

"I forgot to grab you a fork," Brittany apologizes, as if she hasn't just done the nicest thing in the world for Santana anyway.

"It's okay," Santana says, feeling something rise to the surface in her and turn over like a cat wanting its belly rubbed.

"Okay," Brittany parrots back.

When neither one of them has anything else to say for the moment, Brittany just smiles at Santana and looks expectantly at the mess dish. Santana reaches for the biscuit and uses it for a spoon to sop up the grits. She eats and Brittany watches her in silence.

One might expect that eating beside someone who isn't also eating would cause a person to feel rude and self-conscious, but Santana finds that she doesn't mind it so much now, even with Brittany staring at her, watching her chew.

One also might expect the silence between them to feel heavy, but it doesn't. Santana finds it strangely calming to sit in the quiet with Brittany, scooping up the grits before finally finishing the soggy remnants of her biscuit. She drinks the water from the cup and sets her used supper dishes in front of her on the grass, looking to Brittany as if to ask her what they ought to do now.

For a second, Brittany just stares at Santana, looking deeply into her face.

The faintest cat smile curls Brittany's lips.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she whispers, voice just a hush even though they're alone with no one around to overhear them anyway.

Santana nods, staring back at Brittany just as deeply as Brittany stares at her.

(Brittany can tell Santana anything.)

Brittany's cat smile grows. She looks left and right in the darkness and then ducks her head so close to Santana's face that Santana can feel her breath heat the round of her cheek. Santana's heart jumps in her chest, and, for an instant, she forgets to breathe.

"Rachel Berry can't shatter glass with her voice," Brittany says conspiratorially. She wears a devious expression.

"She can't?" Santana asks, shocked.

(If anyone has a voice loud enough to shatter glass, it should be Rachel Berry.)

Brittany nods. "She cracked a glass once, I think, which is what gave Mr. Adams the idea to make it into an act, but she hasn't ever really shattered a whole glass on her own. Mr. Adams' son Arthur came up with the trick. I don't know how it works exactly, but I think it uses a gas lamp hidden under the blue cloth on the stool. The lamp heats up some coils underneath the goblet while Rachel sings. They keep the goblet on a block of ice before the show."

"So when the hot and cold meet, it shatters?" Santana infers.

Brittany nods again, satisfied with herself for telling the secret and pleased with Santana for accepting it. Santana suddenly feels very much happier than she did before—though, strangely, her new happiness has nothing to do with knowing the truth about Rachel Berry's fraud.

Santana stares at Brittany, and Brittany stares back at her, their faces so close together that Santana can see Brittany's pretty fair eyelashes, even through the dark.

(Santana feels a thrill and wants something without knowing exactly what it is.)

"Come on," Brittany says, peeling away from Santana and scrabbling to her feet. She gestures to Santana's used dish where it lays. "Let's get that back to the chuck before Ma Jones skins us for taking dishes out of the mess pit without permission."

Brittany waits for Santana to arrange the cup inside the dish and then extends a hand to Santana to help her up from the ground. Santana clasps her palm to Brittany's and Brittany pulls her up from the grass and to her feet with surprising strength and stability. Santana feels a shiver at skin touching skin, but before she even has time to register it Brittany's hand slips mostly from hers, though not all the way.

"I want to show you something, darlin'," Brittany says happily, curling her digits as they slide down Santana's hand. Their little fingers catch by accident, but then Brittany hooks them together more purposefully. "Close your eyes?" Brittany requests. She gives Santana's pinky finger a squeeze in her own.

"Okay," Santana says stupidly.

(Brittany could ask Santana to do anything.)

Santana's eyelids flutter shut. She holds tightly to both her dish and to Brittany's pinky finger. Once she seems certain that Santana is secure, Brittany gives Santana a little tug, urging her forward, and Santana follows.

Though Santana trusts Brittany not to allow her to run into danger with her eyes closed, she still finds it unnerving walking over uneven terrain without being able to see. Her feet stammer over the bumpy ground, negotiating little knots of weeds underfoot with caution and timidity, pressing into divots on the earth with an especial hesitation.

For her part, Brittany doesn't rush Santana; she allows her to walk slowly and offers her little encouragements as she goes.

"You're doing great, darlin'. Almost there. Just a little further. Turn here. That's it. Easy does it, Santana."

She wears a smile in her voice the whole time.

Eventually, Brittany tells Santana to stop.

"Keep your eyes closed, though," she directs. She dislodges Santana's dish from her hand. "I'm gonna put this away," Brittany says, and, a second later, Santana hears the sound of gurgling water and steel singing against steel in low cetacean tones.

Santana imagines that Brittany just submerged the dish in one of the washtubs at the side of the chuck wagon.

"Brittany?" she says, wondering what's about to happen.

"I'm here," Brittany reassures her, taking Santana's pinky finger in her own again, laughing because they have something that belongs to them now. "All right, just a few more steps."

Brittany leads, and Santana follows.

"Open your eyes."

Santana does as Brittany tells her and finds herself looking out at a stretch of knee-high meadow brome situated between the mess pit and the white tent city. The smell of smoke permeates the air from the campfire somewhere behind her, and blue moonlight shades the camp.

She gasps.

Little spots of yellow-green light flare and fade amongst the shaggy grass heads, floating into the atmosphere like cinders from a fire. There must be a thousand of these glowing specks, or a hundred-thousand, at least. They glide over the field, asynchronous and beautiful, shining like tiny earthbound stars, dotting Santana's vision in ones, twos, and threes. She's never seen such a sight before.

"Brittany," Santana says, breathless, drawing her free hand up to her chest, feeling her own thrilled heartbeat.

"You like it, darlin'?" Brittany asks, laughing her perfect gilded laugh. "It isn't really summer until you see some fireflies, I don't think." Brittany pauses, and Santana looks over to her. When Brittany grins, Santana does, too. "Happy summer, Santana," Brittany says quietly.

(It's the kind of thing Santana wishes that people wrote about in books.)

* * *

><p>After a second, Brittany gives Santana a gentle tug and leads her into the brome grass. "Come on," she says, wading them into the meadow until they stand knee-deep in it, an opus of crickets chirping around them, little cliques of fireflies winking on their every side. They stand facing each other, pinky-in-pinky, and stay that way for the longest time, still and happy in the darkness. Though Santana finds the twinkling field beautiful, she also finds it difficult to look anywhere but at Brittany.<p>

"Thank you," she says after a while.

"You're welcome," Brittany answers warmly.

They stare at one another for another full moment in silence, and then gently, without speaking, Brittany gives Santana another tug, as a child might her kite on a string, and leads Santana away though the brome grass, piloting her across the meadow until they reach the edge of the white city.

Grass seeds and spades stick to the cloth on Santana's gypsy skirt and crush under the soles of her shoes.

Brittany goes barefoot.

They tread back onto the shorter bluegrass of the camp and enter the tent rows, shadows casting over them. Occasionally, they pass another circus person, but, for the most part, the company seems to have gone to sleep.

Santana gets so caught up of the feeling of Brittany's pinky in hers and the strange way the evening has gone from tears to magic that it surprises her when Brittany eventually slows to a halt. Only after a few seconds does Santana realize that they've arrived at Puck's tent.

Santana already thanked Brittany for cheering her back in the meadow, but now she wants to say it again and better. She wants to tell Brittany that her name is pretty and ask Brittany about the knife throwing act. She wants to just hear Brittany talk about anything. She opens her mouth to speak, but finds that she has too much to say to actually tell Brittany anything at all.

Somehow, Brittany seems to understand.

For an instant, Brittany searches Santana with the deepest look Santana has ever seen. She seems to like everything she finds and smiles, warm and golden.

"You get some rest, darlin'," she says sweetly, extricating her pinky from Santana's only so that she can brush her hand over Santana's cheek.

(Santana stills and holds her breath.)

"Things will be better tomorrow," Brittany promises. "I can just tell already."

"Okay," Santana says stupidly.

Brittany offers her another smile.

Santana wants to explain how much it means to her that Brittany came and found her in the dark and treated her kindly when no one else would. "Brittany—," she starts, but Brittany cuts her off.

"Sweet dreams," Brittany says and she leans forward, pressing a quick, soft kiss to Santana's cheek so fleetingly that Santana can't do anything more than feel it before suddenly it's over. Brittany flashes Santana a wise cat smile, and Santana finds herself speechless.

Without another word, Brittany disappears into the darkness.

(Brittany's kiss lingers on Santana's cheek long after Santana goes to sleep.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I dedicate the chapter to my dear friend Tess at venuscomb as part of her birthday present. Many happy returns, darling!<strong>

**Also, as always, I owe all my thanks to my wonderful beta Han at socallmedaisy. She makes the world go round. #brotp: with the u and everything**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**el Padre Nuestro : the Our Father **_**(i.e., a Roman Catholic prayer requesting a forgiveness of sins and deliverance ****from evil)**

_**No debes provocar el Sino, Santana, por el Sino es mayor que incluso la Muerte : You must not tempt Fate, Santana, for Fate is greater than even Death**_

_**Las tarjetas tienen un poco del Diablo y un poco de los ángeles en ellos, querida : The cards have a little of the Devil and a little of the angels in them, dear**_

_**Te dirán secretos y responderán a tus preguntas. Ellos no mienten nunca**** : They'll tell you secrets and answer your questions. They never lie**_

_**Dime la verdad, Santana. ¿Qué ves? : Tell me the truth, Santana. What do you see?**_

_**Veo la Muerte : I see Death**_

_**Así que es verdad: tú eres la malagüera : So it's true: you're the evil omen**_

_**No me mientas, Santana. ¿Qué ves? : Don't lie to me, Santana. What do you see?**_

_**danza : **_**a Puerto Rican dance style originating in the nineteenth century**


	4. Thread Rings and Secret Things

**Chapter 3: Thread Rings and Secret Things**

**Monday, June 27th, 1898: Mankato, Minnesota**

Santana awakens to the sound of hammers and shouting, one hand fitted under her head for a pillow, the other hand pressed lightly over a certain spot on her cheek.

She opens her eyes to an even darkness that could belong to either late night or early morning, her first thought of Brittany, her second of the hour, and her third of Puck, whom she finds nowhere in the tent.

At first Santana panics, worried that the circus has somehow left Worthington without her, but then she remembers that they would have come to collect her tent, at least, even if they didn't care to collect her at all. She processes the noise outside: they're deconstructing the white city; they haven't fully deconstructed it yet.

Looking around the tent, Santana wonders where Puck might have gone off to, not because she misses him but because she doesn't know quite what to do without him around to direct her. She spies Puck's sleeping mat rolled neatly in the corner, and, upon rising from her cot, discovers the water in the stainless steel basin low and seemingly unfilled since yesterday.

Apparently, Puck never came back to the tent after the show last night.

With Puck not present to tell her the time, Santana can't help but feel rushed. She washes and dresses, all aflutter with nerves, groaning as she pulls on her shoes over the tight blisters at the backs of her ankles, and scratches at the numerous bug bites up and down her limbs.

(She makes a note to herself to tease Brittany for taking her into a nest of mosquitoes last night when next she sees her.)

(She never has teased Brittany yet, but suddenly it seems like just the thing to do.)

(She wants more than anything to make Brittany laugh.)

Her skin feels tight from yesterday's sun and hard work. It takes her a full ten minutes to comb through her hair; her eyes water as she struggles to break through all the knots and tangles. Briefly, she wishes that she could access a mirror to check her reflection, but then she chastises herself for being vain. She's just a gypsy girl in a circus; it shouldn't matter to her so much what she looks like.

(Brittany said she looked pretty last night.)

All the while as she dresses, Santana thinks of Brittany, wondering when she'll see Brittany next and remembering Brittany, beautiful, in a field of fireflies last night.

Taking Puck's rucksack and bedroll and her own valise with her, Santana steps outside into the open air, where she finds long-limbed constellations cartwheeling across the dark firmament. Insects chirrup and buzz all around her, and, in the distance, the bull elephant Santana can hear but not see heaves a long, mournful wail toward the sky, as circus lonely as anyone else in the camp. The air feels cool and damp around Santana, much wetter and clammier than the atmosphere in New York. Santana shivers and pulls the luggage she carries closer to her body, amazed at how nights can feel so cold and days so hot, living out of doors.

As she scans her surroundings for Puck, Santana sees that most of the tents around hers already lay dismantled in the dewy grass, including the tent that belongs to the trilby tramp and his companion.

Puck is nowhere in sight.

Santana feels another surge of nerves and wonders what she ought to do. A group of men mill around just fifteen yards or so down a row from her, working together to pack up a roll of canvas and bundle of poles into a wagon; Santana considers calling out to them but doesn't know what she would say once she had their attention.

"Hey!"

A male voice hails Santana, and she turns to her right, expecting Puck. Instead, she finds Sam, the sad clown, whose features she can't yet see clearly through the darkness, but whose happy gait she recognizes, having watched him so closely during yesterday's matinee.

Sam waves to Santana as he draws close enough to her that she can finally see his face, clean from paint for the first time since they arrived in Worthington. Sam doesn't quite smile, but he wears a pleasant expression. He carries a bundle of different-sized objects in his arms and slung over his shoulder. When he comes to within a yard of Santana, he stops.

"Mrs. Puckerman? Is your husband handy?" he asks, voice bright despite the early hour.

(Santana thinks back to yesterday in the tent and dislikes Puck's name in the place of her own even more than usual.)

"No," Santana answers plainly. "I don't know where he went."

Her voice sounds hoarse from recent sleep and from crying so much after the evening circus. She feels as if she swallowed a matte of uncombed cotton.

Sam seems surprised. "He just left you alone here without taking down the tent?" he asks.

Santana nods, not quite sure of what to say. She knows it must break some rule for Puck to abandon her here on her own. Maybe her standing here alone breaks some rules, too.

"And he didn't say when he'd come back?"

Santana shakes her head no, feeling increasingly stupid for not having real answers to Sam's questions and somehow like it's her fault that she can't find Puck. Perhaps if she hadn't ruined the night show with her hesitancy, Puck would have slept in the tent and she wouldn't have had to wake up without him. Santana burns with shame, suddenly remembering everything that happened yesterday before Brittany found her in the darkness.

Sam scrutinizes Santana with same look as Mr. Adams, Ma Jones, and Ken before him, and, for a second, Santana wonders if Sam won't chastise her for being a bad wife to Puck. Her cheeks flare with an uncomfortable heat, and she looks away from Sam's face, steeling herself for whatever it is he might say next.

Her gaze settles on the bundle of objects in Sam's arms, amongst which Santana suddenly recognizes her own peacock-colored knapsack, as well as Puck's fire eating equipment. Sam also carries a bag of his own, as well as a single dandelion with a clump of dirty roots still attached to the stem pinched between his fingers. The flower looks as if Sam has only just picked it out of the ground a few minutes ago.

Though Santana expects that Sam will reprimand her, he doesn't. Instead, when he notices Santana looking at the bags, he flusters.

"Oh," Sam says quickly. "I was going to give these to you—er, to Puck. You left them backstage last night, and I didn't want them getting lost."

He offers the belongings to Santana only to realize that she already has her arms full, just as he does. They both hold almost more than they can carry. For a second, Sam and Santana just stare at each other, flummoxed, but then Sam shakes his head and smiles, amused at their predicament. He laughs a little.

"Woops," he says harmlessly.

Santana wouldn't have felt more surprised at Sam if he had staged an impromptu _danza_ performance for her.

There are rules for how someone like Sam ought to treat someone like Santana, but Sam somehow seems entirely unaware of them.

Really, Sam ought to feel cross with Santana for not keeping better track of Puck. He ought to dislike her because she's new at the circus. He ought to look at her without seeing her. He ought to speak tersely to her and tell her that she's wasted his time.

But he doesn't.

Instead, Sam smiles at Santana, dopey and affable, oblivious to the fact that Santana is the type of person to whom all rules apply. He must be either very foolish or very kind, and Santana isn't sure which it is—all she knows is that she feels grateful to Sam but also unsure of what to do with him. If he pays no mind to the rules with her, must she pay mind to the rules with him?

Sam chuckles and shrugs, amused.

"Why don't we just set all the stuff down?" he suggests. "It's almost time to head out, so we probably ought to just pack up anyway. I don't know when Puck will get back, but we can't really wait for him any longer, so if you would stand aside, I'd happily take down your tent. Then we can head to breakfast. Would that be all right by you?"

Santana nods slowly, checking Sam for any sign that his offer might be a joke at her expense or that he might suddenly harden against her, like Rachel did yesterday on the train when Santana said the wrong thing about her reputation.

When Santana finds nothing in Sam but earnestness, she softens.

"Okay."

(No rules.)

* * *

><p>Despite the small size of the tent, it takes Sam over twenty minutes to fully dismantle it himself. He grunts as he pulls up the stakes from the earth and hops on the tiptoes of his clown shoes to peel the canvas back inch by inch from the wooden tent frame. After rolling the rope into a coil around his hands and setting it aside, he uproots the tent posts with the sleeves of his jacket pulled over his palms to keep himself from getting splinters. He strains with effort all the while.<p>

Though Santana feels guilty watching Sam work without offering to help him, she also knows that if she involved herself in the task at hand, she would only make herself a nuisance. Every now and again, Sam gives Santana an update on his progress, promising that the tent is almost down or that he'll just be a minute or so longer. Santana just nods and offers him quiet thanks, immensely grateful that he happened to arrive upon the scene when he did, as Puck still has yet to return for her and the camp at large seems nearly ready for departure.

After Sam disassembles the tent, he leaves the materials lying in the grass.

"The supes will come pick it up in their wagons," he explains. "Let's get to breakfast while the food's still hot."

Santana agrees with a nod.

They walk the rows of fallen tents sharing the bags between them, with Sam carrying more than Santana, and walk mostly in silence, occasionally passing other circus folk who greet Sam by name and Santana with glares. As the quiet between them wears on, Santana feels increasingly uncomfortable with it. Sam has treated her so kindly that Santana feels she at least owes him the courtesy of conversation, but somehow she doesn't know where to start.

Sam senses her apprehension.

"I heard about your readings at the fair," he says suddenly. He readjusts the gear packed into his arms. "Not too bad, right?"

Sam's lips curl, but Santana can't tell if he wears a smile or a smirk. She also can't tell if he honestly means to praise her or if he wants to draw attention to her failures. If Sam heard about Santana's performance on the midway, then he also undoubtedly heard how Santana upset Mr. Adams and told Mr. Fabray that he would die.

Santana answers Sam cautiously.

"It was my first time," she says, a waver in her voice.

Sam nods. "Your first circus is always a hard one," he says knowingly. "The first time I performed during a matinee, I was twelve years old. I tripped over my clown shoes and dropped the bucket of rubber balls I was supposed to bring to Pop across stage."

There's his earnestness again.

"Thank you, Sam," Santana says suddenly, not just for the story but for everything.

Sam gives Santana a slow honey smile, like he just figured out something new about her. "You're welcome, Mrs. Puckerman."

"Santana."

Sam smiles even more widely. "Well then you're welcome, Ms. Santana."

* * *

><p>It doesn't take Sam and Santana long to reach the mess pit, where they discover breakfast already mostly finished. Sam piles the bags on the peripheries of the dining area, far away from where anyone might step on them, his tongue poked between his teeth as he works. Santana stands over his shoulder, watching the company scuttle about the mess pit like an army of ants over their small sand hill. Tiny gray sphinx moths flitter up from the grass around her ankles. She scans somewhat for Puck but mostly for Brittany.<p>

"Samuel Evans!"

Santana turns at the same time as Sam to see Ma Jones tromping up to where they stand from the mess pit, her apron splattered with breakfast stains, her wooden spoon clutched tightly in her fist at her waist.

(Santana wonders if she will ever go a day at the circus without having Ma Jones sneak up on her.)

"Samuel Evans, if you ain't the laziest fool child on the face of God's earth!" Ma scolds, shaking a reproving finger in Sam's face. "If you think you can sleep half the day away and show up late for breakfast, then you have another thing coming to you!"

Santana shrinks before Ma and looks to Sam, suddenly nervous for him and sorry to get him into trouble on her account. She wants to interrupt Ma to say that Sam hadn't stayed abed all morning but rather only arrived late to breakfast because he stopped to lend her aid. Unfortunately, Santana finds herself too frightened to speak in Sam's defense. She glances in his direction, hoping to at least catch his eye to let him know how awful she feels that he must take a scolding for his kindness to her.

She finds Sam fighting a grin, looking both strangely guilty and entirely unsorry at once.

His amusement isn't lost on Ma Jones.

"You think I'm funny, do you, Sam Evans?" she thunders, raising her wooden spoon as though she actually might swat Sam with it. "Well, I'll have you know that it's only by dumb luck that you haven't missed breakfast altogether! I was about to cool the griddles and pack up the kitchen. I still might've done it, except that I see you've brought Noah Puckerman's missus with you and she ain't eaten yet. As it is, I will allow you to eat breakfast, but I swear that if I catch you in my kitchen again before lunch today, your clown behind won't sit right for a week!"

Ma sounds entirely serious, but Sam couldn't seem less fussed.

In fact, he looks as if Ma just told him some happy secret rather than threatened to beat him. His mouth twitches, desperate to smile. He bites his lip to restrain his mirth, though his pink ears all but give him away. When he finally speaks, he does so with mock penitence, doffing his hat and holding it in his hands.

"Yes, miss."

Ma scrutinizes Sam carefully, as if checking his submission for cracks.

Ma stares at Sam and Sam at her.

"I brought you a flower," Sam says suddenly, reaching behind himself to the back pocket of his trousers and producing the same dirty dandelion Santana had seen him holding earlier. He offers it to Ma along with an apologetic smile.

For a second, Ma stands still. Her face twitches.

(Santana could swear Ma almost smiles.)

When Ma next speaks, she does so in a much smaller voice than before.

"Go get your hotcakes, Sam. And you, too, Santana."

Just when Santana thinks Ma won't take the flower, Ma does, plucking it out of Sam's hands almost as an afterthought, rolling her eyes as she does it. Santana wonders if Sam had planned to give Ma the flower all along or if he had only done it on the fly to make amends with her after arriving so late to breakfast. The lopsided smile that blooms on Sam's face somehow causes Santana to suspect that Sam had picked the flower with Ma in mind from the start.

(Something flips over in Santana's stomach.)

(She thinks of Brittany again without knowing why.)

"Thank you," Santana tells Ma.

Ma just rolls her eyes again, suddenly hard again after her momentary lapse. "Don't make my girls wait!" she says haughtily, pointing toward the table with her spoon.

Neither Sam nor Santana makes Ma give the order twice; they both scurry away to join the other diners from the circus company, Sam wearing his foolish smile, leading Santana along behind him. They make it all the way to the center of the mess pit before someone calls out to them.

"Sam! You found my ladybird!"

After a quick scan of the crowd, Santana spots Puck sitting lazily on a bench, swilling coffee, an empty plate still slick with bacon grease balanced on his lap. He holds a rolled hotcake in one hand, his coffee cup in the other, and smiles his idiot smile at Sam, as though Santana were a belonging which he had misplaced and Sam found for him, in neighborly grace. Puck speaks rather more loudly than necessary, his voice careless and scratchy. Something about his manner seems loose and off, but Santana can't quite figure what it is.

"Yup, right where you left her," Sam shrugs, sidling up to the bench, Santana at his side.

Somehow he seems less enthused than he did talking to Ma Jones just a minute ago.

Upon flanking Puck, Santana can't help but notice the smell of him—sour and dirty, like sweat and something else that Santana doesn't recognize. His eyes seem tired and he squints, even though the sky is still dark and the company only has firelight by which to see anyway.

"Did you sleep good, ladybird?" Puck asks in the same loud, loose way he greeted Sam.

He sets his uneaten hotcake and coffee cup down on the plate and then slides the lot of his breakfastware onto the bench. Satisfied with his work, he smirks his devil smirk at Santana, and she shrinks under his attention, suddenly immensely nervous.

He doesn't care one whit for her answer to his question, she can tell.

Unable to abide the thirst in Puck's gaze, Santana glances away from him, embarrassed though she's done nothing wrong. At the same time, several things happen all at once.

Sam says, "Ms. Santana, why don't you and I grab some breakfast, and Puck can save our spots?"

Santana's eyes catch onto something that they recognize amidst the hubbub of the mess pit.

Her brain registers that the something is Brittany, beautiful in blue, silhouetted against firelight.

Brittany's eyes meet Santana's eyes from across the way, as if she could feel it when Santana found her. Brittany grins, and Santana does, too. Everything in her rises to meet Brittany, like a room of listeners standing to greet their lecturer as he enters the auditorium. She feels a thrill and holds her breath.

(Brittany always surprises her.)

For a second, Santana feels as though everything stops except for her and Brittany, but it doesn't.

"Come on, ladybird," Puck slurs.

He reaches for Santana from the bench, apparently annoyed with her ignoring him. His big, rough palm paws at her body, petting over Santana's waist and up her blouse. Santana jerks away from his touch on impulse, but her motion only makes Puck scramble to catch better hold of her. His right hand cups over Santana's breast and his left hand grabs at Santana's hip as he attempts to pull her into his lap.

"Puck!" Santana shrieks, horrified.

"Ladybird!" Puck complains, annoyed with her fighting.

Several more things happen at once.

Sam shouts Puck's name and moves to shake Puck's shoulder.

Shock, shame, and panic blaze in Santana's chest, and something snaps in her, like stretched elastic. One second she feels Puck's body pressing hard against her back, the next she spins. Her open palm slaps solidly against Puck's neck and the hinge of his jaw, making more of a blunt noise than a smacking one. Her hand flares with pain and she gasps. Puck releases her instantly, reaching to cover his hurt with his fingers.

"Ladybird!" he yowls, but Santana hardly hears him; she immediately searches for Brittany, breathless.

Santana wants to apologize to Brittany for making her see such an untoward display. She also wants Brittany to know that she didn't solicit such behavior from Puck at all—that she doesn't encourage it and finds it vulgar. She wants to explain what just happened.

(For some reason, she feels she ought to explain.)

But when Santana looks, Brittany is gone.

* * *

><p>It takes several minutes for the commotion surrounding Puck's actions to settle down.<p>

Amongst more general murmurs of disapproval, Santana hears the words _drunk_ and _hung over_ uttered with scorn in Puck's direction. Santana also catches certain expressions of muted pity that seem to float her way. Some of the women in the camp say _Poor dear_ and _So young_ and look at her with sorry eyes, while some of the men glare at Puck, as if he disappoints them.

Of course, for every one person who looks upon Santana with compassion, she finds five more who look upon her with derision, as if she invited Puck's inappropriate behavior upon herself. These more numerous critics mutter other words about her—ones which Santana has, quite unfortunately, heard before. They shake their heads and turn their children's faces away from Santana, like her bad reputation might be catching.

_Damn gypsies_ is amongst the kindest of their disdaining remarks.

Naturally, no one says anything to either Puck or Santana directly, aside from Sam, who asks Santana if he might fetch her some hotcakes.

(She tells him yes, he may.)

Once Santana's body calms, she feels less sorry for herself than annoyed at Puck and worried about what Brittany might think of her based on Puck's outburst. Of course it would be Santana's luck that Puck would wait to embarrass her until Brittany could see it.

As Santana hurriedly eats her breakfast, she can't help but replay what happened a hundred times in her mind; each time she remembers it, Puck's actions seem more lascivious and Brittany's disappearance seems more terrible and pointed. By the time Santana finishes her meal, she feels utterly sick.

Sam says goodbye to Puck and Santana after breakfast, hurrying to join his family somewhere on the other side of the mess pit. Santana dislikes seeing Sam go, mostly because she doesn't trust Puck to behave himself in Sam's absence. Thankfully, Puck seems worn out in the wake of his bad behavior. He says nothing to Santana as they collect their bags from the peripheries of the mess area and avoids the eyes of most of the circus folk, entirely subdued.

Leaving camp, Santana searches for Brittany, but finds her nowhere in the crowd.

As it turns out, departing from Worthington constitutes quite less of a production than entering it, and even less of a production than departing from Tekamah did yesterday. Because the train depot stands between the town proper and the field where the circus made its camp, the company doesn't actually have to make its way down the main street again in order to head out.

The bulk of the company, including Puck and Santana, reaches the depot even before the station workers have prepared the train to take them. Accordingly, they find themselves waiting around on the platform, huddling for warmth as the boomers hurry to unload the freight cars and make them ready for the circus to board.

Santana hadn't expected the train to hold any passengers at this early hour, so it surprises her when the doors to the passenger cars open and a cohort of several dozen men disembark from the train onto the platform sans the assistance of a conductor, carrying satchels over their shoulders.

As the men step onto the platform, Santana notes that they wear uniforms comprised of dull, blue sack coats, kersey trousers, and black slouch hats trimmed with golden ties. The backs of their satchels have stitching on them which reads COMPANY H MN 15TH VOL. U.S. ARMY. The men appear tired and displeased to find themselves awake at such an unreasonably early hour; Santana shares their feelings.

She had never seen a soldier on active duty before today.

For their part, the men appear surprised to find themselves in the midst of the circus at rest and stare at the company with both awe and a strange, querying distaste behind their eyes. Their attention lingers on the freaks and dances up and down the bodies of the pretty equestrienne ladies. They don't stop themselves from gaping and act somehow as if they can see the whole circus without any members of the circus seeing them in return.

Watching their alien interest in the company, Santana has to wonder if she didn't look like the soldiers do now when she first saw the circus two days ago in Tekamah, with both curiosity and disgust so evident on her face.

(Somehow, she hopes she didn't.)

The juxtaposition of the soldiers' drab, regular uniforms amidst the bright costumes of the circus folk recalls to Santana images from Kipling, with the Soldiers Three mingling with the flamboyant merchants and patels of India.

As the soldiers pass by Santana, one amongst the number nudges the fellow next to him and points to Santana, whispering something to his comrade that Santana cannot hear. Soon the whole unit has their attention trained to her. Their faces harden into glares.

_Dago_, one of them spits.

_Gallego_, says another.

Santana looks away, a low, hot shame smoldering in her belly, not for anything she's done, but for everything strangers seem to see in her that she can never find in herself, even if she searches. In spite of herself, Santana moves in closer to Puck, ducking behind his shoulder.

"You okay, ladybird?" he asks, far more docile than he was in the camp.

Santana isn't okay, really, so she doesn't say anything.

Just then, the signalman shouts up to the conductor on the platform that the freighters can now receive the circus. Whatever interest Puck had in checking Santana's wellbeing fades as he grabs her wrist and leads her down the tracks towards the open cars. Santana tries not to look at the soldiers as she follows Puck away from the depot.

Today Puck seems in no mood to join his friends for gambling; he passes by the car carrying Finn and the trilby tramp without as much as greeting them.

"Come on," he says, stopping in front of a mostly empty boxcar and waiting for Santana.

When Santana stops at Puck's side, he reaches out, grabbing her around the waist before she can protest. With a single, strong motion, Puck hoists Santana up as a dancer would his partner. Finding her knees suddenly even with the flatbed, Santana stumbles forward into the car, landing on all fours and perhaps more awkwardly than she would have had Puck afforded her some warning before acting. She scarcely manages to move out of the way before Puck heaves himself into the car alongside her with a grunt.

"Hundred miles to Mankato," he says gruffly, as if this information means something to Santana, before crawling into a corner and pulling his hat down over his face.

Santana allows herself to roll her eyes at him as she finds her own spot along the wall.

Several more circus employees board the car along with Puck and Santana, increasing the car's population to somewhere around fifteen persons, most of them supes. Just like yesterday, no one bothers to close the car doors before the train departs the station. Something lurches low in Santana's belly as the train surges forward, hugging the track.

Though the sun has yet to rise, Santana feels more tired than she ever has before in her life, exhausted deep in her bones and even in her breath. When she thinks back on everything she did yesterday, from traveling the two-hundred odd miles from Tekamah to Worthington, to fire dancing at the evening show, to allowing Brittany to pinky-lead her around the camp blind after dark, she almost can't believe it all and wonders at how quickly her life has changed since leaving the bachelor cottage and traveling west.

Her thoughts thin like diluted watercolor waste. Santana yawns from the bottom of her lungs and leans her head against the wall, pulling her knees to her chest for warmth and wrapping her hands in her long gypsy skirt to keep her fingers from freezing. As she teeters between waking and dreams, Santana wonders about Brittany and considers asking Puck in which car the knife thrower and his daughter ride so that maybe she can join them there on tomorrow's journey.

* * *

><p>She awakens perturbed and on alert.<p>

Someone is too close to her.

Two someones are, in fact.

"Well, g'morning, cookie," says one of the someones.

"You have some sweet dreams?" asks the other.

Santana opens her eyes to find two supes sitting uncomfortably close to her, one of them darker than her, the other fair like Sam and Finn. The two men appear equally interested in Santana and thirsty, just like Puck.

Both of them are heavyset. The dark supe has such a visage that Santana imagines that he must always seem either sad or angry, with eyes both hangdog and glaring; she can't imagine that he ever truly smiles. The fair supe has dark hair, a high forehead, thin eyebrows, and a round chin. Despite his great stature, he somehow reminds Santana of a schoolchild. Santana can't be certain, but she thinks he might also play the big clown who helps to arrange Rachel's Little Malibran act during the circus.

He and his companion stare at Santana, their mouths hanging open, their eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing?" Santana snarls, affronted that they would watch her sleep.

The dark supe smirks: "Just taking in the scenery—"

The fair supe smirks, as well: "—and checking out the equipment."

Both of them chuckle, as though their vulgarity were actual cleverness. Santana scowls and sits up straighter, flattening herself against the wall while at the same time moving an arm in front of her body, forming a weak barrier between herself and them. She glances at Puck in the corner to find him still soundly asleep. Her heartbeat picks up, outpacing the clacking of the train.

"We saw your gypsy show this morning," the dark supe says casually, as if he only intends to make polite conversation. He glances between Puck and Santana, his eyes lingering at the front of Santana's blouse.

"Yeah, we were wondering if maybe we could get a demonstration," the fair supe chuckles, reaching forward to tap two menacing fingers against the toe of Santana's shoe.

Santana stiffens.

The other supes in the car sleep or pretend to sleep, either oblivious to Santana's predicament or unwilling to involve themselves in it. If the dark supe and the fair supe were to advance on her, Santana knows that she would scream, but she wonders if her screaming would be enough to wake Puck and if he could even fight off both the supes at once if it did wake him. She imagines herself hitting the supes now like she hit Puck yesterday in the tent but realizes that Puck only stopped his advances on her when she hit him due to shock. Santana didn't hurt him at all. He desisted from his actions mostly as a courtesy—because he knows Santana and likes her, for some reason.

These men don't know or like Santana at all.

Santana feels trapped and hates her weakness in the face of these villains, who don't deserve the strength they have. She hates that no one will care if they impose themselves on her; everyone in the car will look away. She thinks back to the Tenderloin district, to the terrible things that happened in the boarding house by dead of night that no one spoke of in the daylight.

(Briefly, Santana wonders if she could survive jumping from a moving boxcar.)

Her stomach clenches, everything in her resolving itself against what might happen.

_Oh God_, she thinks.

"Show me some of that gypsy magic," says the dark supe, sneering. His hand moves to wrap around Santana's ankle.

Santana jerks away from him, suddenly wild.

Her body livens with fear and hate and passionate defense.

_"No me toques!"_ she screams. _"Si pones tus manos sobre mí, lo juro por Dios que el Diablo le llevará! Tengo una maldición! Yo te maldigo! El diablo en mi hombro se arrastra hacia abajo al Infierno! Por Dios, no me toques!"_

Santana's voice fills the boxcar, fraying and awakening the other supes and Puck in an instant. The dark supe pulls back his hand from Santana's ankle as if burned and both he and his companion recoil, fear flooding their faces.

Though they don't understand Santana's words, they certainly appreciate the scorch of them.

In her fury, Santana somehow feels taller than the men; she watches them cower as if from above, strangely disconnected from her own body. She thrills as they shrink but also fears. Her heart stampedes against her ribcage.

When next she speaks, she does so in English, but wearing her grandmother's accent, which seems to somehow fit better now than it even did yesterday when she read Mr. Fabray's fortune.

"You touch me, I hex you!" she threatens, waving her hand to ward the supes away.

The two supes stare at her with wide, white eyes.

"Stay away!" she snarls.

By now, Puck has scrambled to his feet. "Ladybird, what happened?" he splutters, more bright-eyed than Santana has seen him all day. He stumbles over between Santana and the supes, looking from her to them in sheer confusion.

"Your wife is crazy!" says the fair supe, glancing up at Puck as if Puck has come to protect him instead of Santana.

Puck doesn't take kindly to the accusation.

"You back off, David!" he shouts, stomping hard on the flatbed, threatening a charge.

"Y'all crazy!" says the dark supe. "Come on, man!" he taps David's shoulder, gesturing for him to move to the other side of the car.

David doesn't need a second invitation.

He and the dark supe peel themselves from the floor and hurry away, somewhere between annoyed and terrified. David looks back over his shoulder once, a strange, indecipherable expression written briefly on his face, there and then gone.

Puck leans against the wall and sits down so close to Santana that he nearly falls on top of her. He slips his hand around her wrist.

"You okay, ladybird?" he asks in a low, worried voice, suddenly the little boy Santana likes best in him. He looks at her with worried eyes. He still smells of sweat and that strange sourness but seems less loose than before. "Ladybird, you're shaking."

Part of Santana wants to bury her face in Puck's neck and hide until the train reaches Mankato, but the other part of her—the part that trembles and feels so on edge—remembers yesterday in the tent and sees Puck the same as it sees the two reprobate supes cowering on the other side of the car. That part of Santana wants nothing to do with Puck.

(The part of Santana that feels but doesn't speak only wants Brittany.)

Santana says nothing.

* * *

><p>Puck sticks close to Santana for the duration of the ride. Neither he nor Santana sleeps. The other passengers in the car eye Puck and Santana as one would a man whose face seems to match that sketch on a police poster. The two supes who harassed Santana sit with their backs turned to her now, their heads pressed together as they mutter back and forth between themselves. At some point, Santana feels certain she hears Puck's name carried on their voices; she hopes they don't give him a licking on her account once they find him alone. Somehow, she doesn't think that they will.<p>

(She saw them, cowards, in her glamour moment.)

The train arrives at the depot in Mankato, Minnesota nearly two and a half hours after leaving the station in Worthington, at exactly quarter to eight in the morning, according to Puck's scratched, old pocket watch.

The sky overhead now appears a lonesome, periwinkle blue, cloudless enough that Santana can still spot the planet Venus shining just over the northeastern horizon between the various domiciles and buildings of Mankato. The Union Station borders a wide, low river that smells of wet and grist. Though the city surrounds the train yard on all sides, the place feels lonely.

As the circus detrains onto the platform, Santana scans the crowd for Brittany, anxious to find her, not only because she still wants to apologize to Brittany for all the lewdness of this morning but also because something in Santana knows that Brittany will provide the best comfort of anything in the world to her right now following her scare in the boxcar.

Though Santana spots Ma Jones, Hiram and Rachel Berry and their quadroon manservant, the trilby tramp, and Mr. Evans amongst the hustle, she finds no sign of Brittany.

"This way," Puck says, leading Santana through the swells of elbows and shoulders to take a seat on the platform's edge, from which they dangle their feet into the rail well.

Santana kicks her legs against the air, her thoughts one hundred miles away, with fireflies. She watches her shoes floating out over the grayscale pebbles below. Her valise sits at her one side, Puck at her other. She feels Puck watching her but not with the same thirst as he did this morning. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots his idiot smile, though somehow it looks thoughtful—_sophomoric_, Santana's father might say.

Without speaking, Puck lifts the hat from his head and puts it onto Santana's. The hat smells of spice and stale musk and sinks down over Santana's eyes, too big. She smiles, in spite of herself.

(She knows it's Puck's way of apologizing.)

(If things were different, she might not forgive him.)

She wears the hat until the company rustles, ready to move, and then hands it back to Puck so he can tuck it inside his rucksack for the parade. Puck helps Santana stand on the platform, extending two hands to Santana to help her up. After Santana manages to stand upright, Puck takes hold of Santana's wrist, and for once she doesn't flinch away. Instead, she just follows him to the vehicles waiting for the circus on the lawn, where she and Puck join Rachel Berry hanging from the back of a mud wagon already filled with clowns.

Though Santana had expected Rachel to still feel cross with her after her most detestable failure during last night's show, Rachel greets both Puck and Santana with a smile.

"Noah," she says brightly, ducking her head in acknowledgment of him. "Santana."

If Rachel can tell how much her warmth shocks Santana, she kindly doesn't mention it. Instead, Rachel starts talking to one of the clowns through the bars on the wagon carriage, asking him if he happens to know whether Mr. Fabray will attend the show with Mr. Adams today or not. In that moment, Santana begins to understand something about Rachel Berry: performance truly does mean everything to her.

(Suddenly, Santana remembers what Brittany told her about Rachel's act.)

(Santana feels sad for Rachel in a way she can't fully explain.)

* * *

><p>Whereas during the parade yesterday, Santana lost herself in the bright tide of the circus, during the parade today, she takes more interest in the city surrounding the procession than the actual procession itself.<p>

Mankato, Minnesota is the biggest city Santana has seen since New York, with a wide main road that leads into town and up a hill. The whole city boasts of itself in brick red and tree green and seems almost ripe to bursting. Though much of the architecture in the city appears old and Gothic, the technology in the city is new, with electrical poles lining the lanes and the tracks for a newfangled cable car laid out upon the road. Santana hadn't ever imagined that a western prairie town could feature so many modern amenities. Some of the department stores stand three stories high and have lightning rods at their peaks.

As was the case in Worthington, what must be nearly the whole citizenry of Mankato turns out for the circus parade, with merchants exiting their shops still bedecked in aprons and mothers holding up their little children to see the spectacle along the sidewalks. People populate not only the main street, but also hang from windows overlooking the ground below. Some of them wave little American flags on sticks and others white handkerchiefs. All of them vie for the attention of the circus folk, their voices blending into male-female-elder-child, excited and overloud. Just like during the evening show, Santana finds herself caught up in the rapture of the moment.

Yesterday in Worthington, Santana mostly just clung to the wagon as the circus made its way into town, but today in Mankato, Santana joins Puck, Rachel, and the clowns in waving to the hoi polloi, smiling at them and returning the welcoming gestures of the little children calling to them from the sidewalks.

It takes nearly a half an hour for the circus to make it all the way from the head of the main street near the depot to the crest of the hill overlooking the city, but once they do reach the hill's summit, they increase their pace, suddenly more concerned with getting to their camp than with amusing the spectators lining the streets. They arrive at their destination within another quarter hour.

Today, the circus makes its camp upon a flat stretch of land bordering a dense forest. Just as in Worthington, the company arrives to find the white city already mostly erected, the tent rows standing at attention and the frame of the big top casting crisscross shadows askance upon the earth. Birds circle, cawing overhead, startling when the elephants announce their arrival to the grounds with bellowing trumpets.

After Santana and Puck stash their belongings in their tent, Puck sends Santana to assist Ma Jones in the kitchen, never mind how she fears to do so or Ma Jones' general dislike of her.

"It'll be fine," Puck promises after Santana asks if maybe she can't help him put up the zebra pens with the fellows instead. "Just mind your manners, ladybird."

Upon her arrival at the mess pit, Santana finds that Ma Jones feels only about as excited to see Santana as Santana does to see her.

"Let's see if Mrs. Schuester doesn't need some help," Ma says in a falsely sweet voice, glancing nervously between Santana and her kitchen girls.

(Apparently, she heard about their altercation yesterday.)

"Yes, miss," Santana says, remembering to mind her manners.

Santana follows Ma Jones away from the mess pit, around the chuck wagon, and through the same trisection of tents where she first met Brittany yesterday.

As they walk, Santana can't help but consider how strange it is that she has only known Brittany Pierce for less than a day; in some ways, their acquaintance already feels very old indeed, but, in other ways, it seems that no matter for how long they might know each other, their acquaintance will somehow never be old enough.

Not for the first time since leaving Worthington, Santana wonders to where Brittany has gone and longs to see her.

Ma and Santana cut through the billboard border separating the residential camp from the empty circus midway, passing between the booths lining the pitch and rounding the corner of the sideshow until they reach the dressing tents on the far side of the big top. The hard, sharp sounds of construction pound out over this side of the camp, with the supes laboring intensely to bring the big top to its full height and splendor. In the distance, the spotted asses bray. A light wind blows in from the south, carrying summer smells and circus sounds across the camp.

"Inside," Ma Jones directs, peeling back the flaps to the ladies' dressing tent and nodding for Santana to move.

Santana enters the tent to find it in the same loud, cramped state of disarray as it was two days ago when she first visited it in Tekamah. Several of the same young seamstresses Santana recognizes from the other day sit in little clusters on the floor, huddled around what looks like a very elaborate sewing project, stacks of boldly colored felt and wax paper patterns strewn all about them. The young seamstresses laugh and gossip as they work, paying very little mind to Ma and Santana's combined presence.

Mrs. Schuester sits at a stool with her back turned to the door, pinning a crude blue and white tunic to a headless cloth mannequin so that she can tailor it. When she hears Ma and Santana approach, she turns to them, her eyes owlish and unsettlingly wide. She holds several pins pursed tightly between her lips. With the pins protruding from her mouth and her eyebrows riding so high on her forehead that they might well disappear into her hair, Mrs. Schuester looks positively mad, like a younger, prettier Miss Havisham.

"Ma!" she says around her pins in her honeysuckle and acid voice; she seems surprised and caught—apparently, her usual state when addressing Ma Jones.

"Mrs. Schuester," Ma Jones returns. "I knew y'all would be sewing up these knight costumes today, and I thought you might be able to use some help. Since Santana provided such fine stitching on the equestrienne outfits yesterday, I thought you might like to use her again today. She's very handy with a needle and thread—ain't you, Santana?"

"I—," Santana starts.

Mrs. Schuester doesn't wait for Santana to speak. Instead, she shoots Ma Jones a mean look, as though Ma just beat her at some parlor game, like Pass the Pickle. She clearly doesn't appreciate Ma sticking her with Santana anymore than Ma appreciated Puck doing the same to her.

"There's a stack of fronts and backs over there," Mrs. Schuester says sharply, talking around Ma to direct her orders at Santana, pulling the pins from between her lips and using them to point to a pile of fabric on top of a wooden trunk. "If you can manage to sew the two pieces together, then my girls can put the crosses onto them."

Upon brief inspection, Santana finds that the components of the tunics themselves are square shaped and only require stitches along the top shoulder seams to fit together, with little ties at the sides to hold them together otherwise. In the next minute, Mrs. Schuester loads Santana up with a sewing kit and one half-dozen tunics to sew, and Ma Jones disappears from sight, presumably headed back to the mess pit to finish making preparations for lunch.

Mrs. Schuester eyes Santana, her pink lips pressed thin as she checks Santana for that same something that almost everyone seems to find wrong in her.

"Be careful," Mrs. Schuester snips, glaring at Santana though Santana has yet to make any mistakes.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And no dawdling," Mrs. Schuester snips again.

"No, ma'am."

Mrs. Schuester stares at Santana for a second longer, checking the sincerity of her answer. When she finds fear in Santana, she seems pleased. She purses her lips and makes a humming sound.

"Just bring them back when you've finished the stack," she says.

Santana only nods.

With Mrs. Schuester's permission, Santana takes her work out of the dressing tent, emerging into the outdoors to find the white city so luminous against the glare that it could well be in flames.

After leaving the well-trimmed midway lawn, she finds herself high-stepping across a field of tall, blue-tinged cocksfoot, treading carefully so as not to trip or spill the bundle she carries in her arms. The weeds underfoot titter with the beat of bug wings, with dragonflies darting amidst the thistle and fat flies flagging between drooping oxeye and little purple loosestrife.

Upon making it back to the residential camp, Santana manages to find her and Puck's tent without getting lost and slithers between the tent flaps, dropping the tunics and sewing kit into the grass as soon as she feel confident that she's alone.

Though the temperature inside the tent swelters, Santana immediately appreciates the quiet and the privacy sewing inside the tent will afford her. She sets down and arranges her work, sorting out the fronts and backs of the tunics and pairing them according to color before rummaging through her sewing kit to find the proper needle and most cooperative white thread for her particular task.

Sewing is a tedious job but one that also soothes Santana in its simplicity. As she threads her needle and smoothes the fabric, she finds herself glad for a moment of respite. She hums to herself as she starts making her stitches, first snatches of old San Juan songs and then part of the march from this morning's parade into Mankato. Her mind traipses back to Brittany, wondering what odd jobs the knife thrower's daughter does around camp in the hours between breakfast and lunchtime.

Just then, the wall of the tent rustles.

Santana shrieks, startled as the sod cloth beside the cot bulges and then parts to reveal an intruder.

Before Santana can as much as move, Brittany Pierce appears before her.

Santana drops her needle into the grass and her hands leap to press against her breast, preventing her heart from taking wing in its fright. For all of Santana's shock, Brittany couldn't seem more unruffled herself; she slithers into the tent from the outside, crawling up beside the cot in one sleek, musteline motion.

Once inside the tent, she rests on her elbows, feet still somewhere beyond the wall, and checks her surroundings, wearing a curious expression, as if her surroundings are not entirely expected.

(She doesn't seem at all displeased to find herself where she is, though.)

As soon as her pretty cat eyes settle on Santana, they light like the sun coming up over the horizon on the sea, and her primrose lips curl in a wise, happy way.

"Fancy seeing you around here, darlin'," she says, grinning like she just found her lucky penny.

Santana gasps, her mind two steps behind the moment, her heart five or ten or twenty or maybe eighty steps ahead, her eyes unaccustomed to seeing something as beautiful and singularly unique as Brittany amidst the drabness of Puck's tent.

"Fancy seeing me?" she peeps, voice still high and flighty from shock. "This is my tent."

Brittany's smile fades. She stares at Santana, utterly serious: "No it isn't."

She gives her head a slight shake so that a lock of hair falls over her face.

Dear Lord.

Santana panics, looking around at the fixtures of the tent. Did she really happen into someone else's tent by mistake? She knew she found her way here too easily. Is this Brittany's tent? Oh God—

She checks Brittany's face again.

A smile hints at the corners of Brittany's lips but blooms in full inside her eyes, giving her away.

After a second, Santana recognizes another one of Brittany's sly straight faced jokes, like the one she made to Quinn yesterday. Knowing that Santana has caught her jest, Brittany allows herself to smile fully. She laughs and Santana does, too, blushing because Brittany fooled her so well. Something squeezes in Santana's chest, and she sighs, expelling all her lingering fright in a breath so that now she only feels happy and not startled anymore.

"You scared me!" she says, faking offense, rocking back onto her hands. Her mouth twists into a shape that feels unfamiliar but nevertheless welcome to her—into a brand new smile for Brittany, like something Santana picked out for Brittany especially at a store. Instantly, Santana feels lighter than before and like her eyes, skin, and heart have just come awake for the day.

Brittany pulls her feet inside the tent, still smiling as she moves.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you—er, at least not too badly," she admits, shrugging. She peers over the fabric and sewing supplies strewn around Santana's skirt. "Looks like Mrs. Schuester got you for one of her seamstresses after all, huh?"

She scrunches up her nose at the thought of all the work.

(Santana feels a sweet pang play through her chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

Without asking if she ought to, Brittany reaches for the sewing kit that sits between herself and Santana, producing a spool of red thread and needle from it. She takes account of Santana's piles before selecting a paired back and front of a tunic to sew together.

"You don't have to do that," Santana says quickly and in a loud voice. When Brittany looks at her, startled at Santana's adamancy, Santana hurries to explain, "You already helped me so much yesterday and... well, I haven't helped you with anything at all. I don't want to make you do my work."

_(I want to give you things.)_

Brittany shrugs. "It'll go twice as fast if both of us work," she says, as if to settle the matter. She smiles her wise, happy smile again. "It will be like when the fairies helped the princess spin all that straw into gold overnight," she notes.

Santana knows what Brittany really means, of course, but somehow her ears only hear that Brittany just likened her to a princess.

(No one has ever done that before.)

Her breath catches just behind her lips and immediately she thinks back to when she first met Brittany in the shadows of the three tents and how Brittany reminded her of one of Malory's fairy maids, so beautiful and wild. Suddenly what Brittany says feels just too perfect. Santana blushes and looks to her own knees.

"I'm not a princess, though," Santana demurs, mostly to remind herself, lest she take Brittany's words too much and too quickly to heart. She can never allow herself to want anything too much, after all.

(Santana must remember: everyone except a very few people in this camp seems to hate her.)

(They don't make princesses like her anyway.)

Santana tries to keep her voice light and forces a small smile, but when she glances back at Brittany, she finds Brittany's expression serious, her look deep and careful.

"You could be, darlin'," she says simply, shrugging as though it's just that simple.

She stares at Santana for a second longer before setting back to work, matching the hemlines of her two tunic halves together, eyeballing them for evenness. She pokes her tongue between her teeth, absentminded.

With Brittany looking elsewhere, Santana smiles her new Brittany-smile to bloom in full.

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana work mostly in silence, much as they did yesterday under the shade of the trisecting tents. They sew quickly, sharing the two spools of thread, a certain invisible energy welling between them as they move toward their goal. Though neither one of the girls has spoken of it, somehow it feels that they have a reward awaiting them when they finish their work—the promise of more jokes from Brittany and more laughter from Santana.<p>

Santana finds herself biting her lips into her mouth to keep from smiling too widely. She looks up to find Brittany staring at her, paused mid-stitch.

"Sorry," both Brittany and Santana say at once, laughing.

Brittany shakes her head at herself in the same modest way she did yesterday. She glances down at her sewing work. A frown replaces her smile.

"I keep getting distracted from my stitches. I'm not a very good seamstress," she admits, her bottom lip pressing into a pout. She sounds genuinely upset and Santana wonders if someone hasn't insulted Brittany's sewing before. Suddenly, erasing the disappointment from Brittany's face becomes the most important thing for Santana to do.

Brittany extends her latest handiwork for Santana to inspect.

While Brittany's stitches don't appall Santana, they certainly don't meet Santana's grandmother's most stringent standards, either, with some stitches bigger than the others, irregular intervals stretching between them. Brittany holds her breath and bites her lip, pinking it beneath her teeth. She waits on Santana's verdict.

"They're good," Santana says carefully, a pricking feeling in her heart.

Brittany furrows her brow. "But they're loppy."

Santana shrugs, "I'm sure Mrs. Schuester won't notice."

"I'm sure she will," Brittany objects hopelessly. She shakes her head at herself. "I think you need better fairies, Santana."

Santana wants desperately to say something clever about how she already has the best fairy in the world just then, but she comes up too breathless to say anything at all. Instead, she settles for laughing at Brittany's joke, with Brittany laughing, too. Silence settles in the tent again, warmed with the summer heat. Brittany still looks a bit sad at her poor stitching, though.

(Santana can't stand the thought of Brittany feeling sad.)

"If you dip the needle at first instead of pulling it all the way through, it will help you keep a straighter line," Santana says in a small voice she's never heard herself use before. Her heart beats quickly, like that of a mouse, and her ears pink.

Brittany smiles at her. "Can you show me?"

She extends her hand, which still holds her needle, and the tunic to Santana.

Santana nods. "Of course," she says, resituating herself a bit closer to Brittany.

She looks from Brittany's hands to Brittany's face, silently asking permission to guide Brittany through the motion. When Brittany nods, Santana takes Brittany's wrist in her grasp and conducts it both gently and slowly to pierce the fabric with the needle, using the same patient movements with Brittany as her grandmother once did with her. It surprises Santana when she feels Brittany trembling, like Brittany's body is a string, vibrant under Santana's touch.

"You're really good at that," Brittany says, awed, as Santana helps her set a tight, dipped stitch.

(Santana has never felt prouder of anything in her life.)

After that, their work seems to go much faster, perhaps because Brittany learns Santana's technique quickly and uses it to her benefit and perhaps because the promise of their invisible reward somehow feels closer than ever. Between the two of them, they finish all six tunics within an hour and a half. Santana sets the last one on the stack.

"I should get these back to Mrs. Schuester," she says, wondering if Brittany won't come with her on her errand, hoping that she will.

"No, you shouldn't," Brittany says, the expression on her face turning wily. She flashes Santana a wicked smile. "Mrs. Schuester won't expect you to have this all finished until lunchtime. If you let her know you finished early, she'll give you more work to do."

"But if I wait to give it to her, how will I know to do it before the bell rings?" Santana asks, too practical for her own good.

"I always get hungry just before lunch. I'll just tell you when my stomach growls," Brittany shrugs. Brittany rises from where she sits on the grass, leaving her sewing supplies strewn on the ground. "Hup, hup," she says, extending her hands to Santana to help Santana up as well.

Santana allows Brittany to get her to her feet, thrilled at the thought of them shirking chores together. Santana has never done something so wonderfully disobedient before, and she's certainly never had someone so wonderful to do something disobedient with.

"Well, what do you think I should do instead, then?" she asks, mirroring Brittany's wicked smile with one of her own.

Brittany raises an eyebrow at her, playful. "Has anyone shown you the elephants yet?"

Aside from her all too startling encounter with one of the great brutes yesterday during the evening circus, Santana has only seen the elephants as part of the parade so far. Certainly no one has explained them to her, and neither has she viewed them in their pen.

Secretly, Santana fears to meet the elephants on account of their enormity and unpredictability; the idea that something so big might perhaps take a disliking to her for a reason Santana can neither anticipate nor comprehend causes Santana to want to stay as far away as possible from that something-so-big, in principle. Even so, the sheer, vivid excitement in Brittany's voice piques Santana's curiosity.

She finds herself wanting to go and not wanting to go at once.

(In the circus, one must think about elephants as perhaps nowhere else.)

When Santana doesn't answer right away, Brittany takes that as her cue.

"Come on," she says, leading Santana to the tent flaps, which she parts, revealing a shock of sunlight. Immediately, the tent feels less stuffy inside.

As soon as they step outdoors, Brittany's hand glides over Santana's wrist, her pinky latching onto Santana's, joining them.

(Santana feels immeasurably happy that Brittany remembered to hold her pinky finger again after last night.)

Santana grins and Brittany returns her expression, their vision adjusting to the morning glare. Brittany should look funny-faced, squinting against the brightness, but somehow she just looks prettier than ever, highlighted in brilliant white, a backdrop of blue sky bold and broad behind her. A thin slick of sweat shines on Brittany's skin, over the bridge of her nose, across her brow, and upon the curves of her cheeks, creating the illusion of a glow.

Brittany gives Santana's pinky a little tug, gesturing in the direction of the midway.

"Right this way, madam," she says in a falsely proper-sounding accent. She bows her head like a bellhop about to escort a new guest into a hotel.

"But of course," Santana says politely, mimicking Brittany's accent for herself. She curtsies—crudely because she doesn't want to let go of Brittany's finger—and allows Brittany to lead her toward the billboards, away from her tent.

She can already tell that wherever she goes with Brittany will be the best place she'll visit all day.

* * *

><p>Brittany leads Santana at a scamper, not dragging her behind like Puck, but instead racing her at a mostly even pace down the tent rows. They quickly bypass the edge of the residential camp, slipping between the billboards that line the midway pitch, laughing as their feet jostle over the uneven grass.<p>

The two girls slip between the billboards and the booths standing just ahead of them, elaborate linens in bold greens, oranges, indigoes, and reds billowing overhead, the morning breeze filling the carnival cloth like ship sails. The billboard frames moan, swaying slightly back and forth. Santana feels as if she and Brittany have strayed into a creaking, bending textile forest.

Sunlight filters through the ballooning fabric, painting both the grass underfoot and the tents along the midway in unapologetic jewel tones. Santana finds her own skin temporarily suffused in translucent, harlequin hues.

"This is the prettiest place in the whole camp before noon," Brittany notes without stopping, her face blued and oranged, beautiful in the prism light. She looks up at the billboards, an awed expression on her face, as if she had never seen the sight before, though she purports it as a favorite.

"Where's the prettiest place after noon?" Santana shouts back, curious as to what happens once the sun shifts, dispersing the colors.

Brittany looks at Santana in that really seeing-way.

"I'll show you later," Brittany promises, and Santana knows that she will.

Though they would arrive faster at their destination passing by the dressing tents, Brittany insists that they ought not to go that way, instead leading Santana around the far side of the big top and past the elliptical menagerie tent, ducking them through deep, purple shadows.

"If we go by the dressing tents, Mrs. Schuester might find us," Brittany explains, breathing in little gasps from all their running. "She has the best way of turning up at the worst times."

Their strides only slightly slow as they round the back of the big top, traveling past the backstage area opposite the one where Santana prepared for the show last night. Herds of fancy white ponies and whooping zebras populate temporary pastures and enclosures all up and down the back of the big top. Beyond them, Santana can already see the behemoth silhouettes of the dark, dun elephants stark against the bright, blue sky.

All the while, Brittany keeps her and Santana's fingers snugly curled together. Santana feels somehow that she's just won something very much worth owning, but can't find a name for the thing in her mind.

The girls stop just a few paces from the elephant pen, which consists of hundreds of sturdy logs, each nearly ten feet high and two feet in circumference, protruding from the earth, arranged in a crude circle nearly two-hundred feet in diameter. A bulwark of slightly thinner logs reinforces the palisade at an angle. The overturned dirt surrounding the enclosure betrays its recent construction.

Behind the palisade stand the elephants.

For what must be the thousandth time since she arrived at the circus, Santana's breath stops.

There is something reverencing in facing a being much greater than oneself. The elephants seem so much bigger up close than they did even in the parade, with the largest amongst them just slightly taller than the logs that form the palisades and the other two only barely shorter than it.

The elephants have boney, protruding spines and bloated bellies that wobble as they walk, with long, wise faces and the strangest and most sentient proboscises that Santana has ever seen. They snuff and cough as they kick around their circle pen, browsing lazily upon the tall stack of hay pitched at the center of their ring.

Even with the log barrier partitioning the elephants from her, Santana cowers before the beasts, imagining how deadly an elephant rampage could be before she can stop herself from thinking such a dreadful thought.

For however much the elephants frighten Santana, Brittany seems fearless before them. She gives Santana's finger a little tug and walks right up to the fence herself, even though Santana hangs back, stretching their linked arms between them. Brittany smiles at Santana over her shoulder, her face half in shadow from the pen, half in sun, all beautiful, before turning her attention to the elephants.

"Hey, folks," Brittany says in a gentle, happy voice, reaching up to put her free hand through the slats on the fence before Santana can say anything to stop her.

(Santana gasps and tightens her grasp on Brittany's finger, as though holding onto Brittany's pinky will somehow keep Brittany safe.)

(With her.)

To Santana's horror, the largest of the elephants saunters over to where Brittany stands and extends his trunk to Brittany's hand, nuzzling her knuckles with the nub on the end of his nose. Brittany grins, pleased.

"Santana," she says, "this is Methuselah. He's the oldest elephant in North America. He was born the same day they signed the Missouri Compromise in 1820 at a zoo in France. They brought him to the States as part of another circus. Mr. Adams bought him when he was fifty-five years old. They used to call him Maximillian at his other circus, but now that he's so old, we call him Methuselah, and I think he likes that better because he always looks at you when you say his name. Right, big fella?" she gives the elephant's trunk a little pat, prompting him to wind it around her wrist in a strangely friendly motion.

Santana just holds her breath, unsure of what to say.

Brittany smiles fondly at the elephant. "Methuselah," she says—Santana swears the elephant does answer to his name, looking at Brittany from beneath his long, spider's leg eyelashes with a special kind of knowing attention—"this is my friend, Santana."

Suddenly, Santana realizes what she won.

At Brittany's word, an effulgent kind of gratitude radiates through Santana, fanning out from the crux of her into her skin and blood and bones until she can't help but smile more widely than she ever has before in her life. At the same time, her throat catches, sticky with honey adoration, a happy kind of tears she's never had any good reason to cry before pricking at her eyes. The feeling swelling in her chest seems almost too big and too wonderful to stay inside her. Santana chokes out something between a sob and a laugh before she can help herself.

In nearly nineteen years, no one has ever called Santana her friend before.

(Santana had never realized how very lonely she was until suddenly she isn't lonely at all.)

(Until suddenly she's the opposite of lonely.)

Santana doesn't want to cry in front of Brittany again, though—not after she already cried enough last night and not about something happy. She also doesn't want to admit to Brittany that she never had any playmates as a child or any confidantes or even a pen pal as she grew older.

(Somehow, it startles Santana to find that perhaps she wasn't as happy at the bachelor cottage as she had once thought.)

"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Methuselah," she chokes out, hoping that Brittany won't notice the latch in her voice, remembering to mind her manners, just like Puck counseled her to do.

Brittany beams like Santana is just as sweet as apple pie. "Wanna come say hello?" she asks in her perfect, artless way.

Santana shrinks. She shakes her head no, just slightly, as if her moving too much might provoke the elephants. It doesn't, of course. Instead, Methuselah just drops Brittany's hand and returns to his grazing.

Brittany considers Santana for a moment but doesn't press the matter. She turns back to the fence and points at the other two elephants.

"That's Deborah," she says, indicating the bigger and more yellow of the two animals. "And that's Bathsheba," she says, nodding at the smallest elephant, who has her back turned to Brittany and Santana at the moment. Brittany whispers to Santana: "Deborah's in charge, but don't tell Methuselah."

Santana laughs, but before she can say anything, Brittany gives her pinky finger a squeeze, releases her hand, and takes a bounding step toward the fence.

In one agile motion, Brittany scales the diagonal bulwark leading up to the fence, walking duck-footed up one of the beams, her bare feet curling to help her balance.

She moves quickly and with her arms extended on either side of her, reminiscent of the Chinese acrobats in her grace. Once she reaches the head of the bulwark, she wraps her hands around one of the logs and shimmies up it until she can toss her leg over the palisades.

"Brittany!" Santana shrieks, unable to stop herself, heart suddenly pounding so quickly that she fears it might leave her behind.

Brittany just offers Santana a careless smile, settling in the V between two of the logs like a rider settling into a saddle. Her long, pale legs dangle down from her perch and her skirt hitches up around her hips, wonderfully immodest. Santana feels hot in the face looking at Brittany, out of breath and frightened but also interested. She's never seen someone so fearless before in her life.

"It's okay, darlin'," Brittany says, seemingly enjoying the view as she squints down at Santana through the sun. She smiles, content as if she had just settled into bed instead of upon a ten foot fence with three fully-grown African elephants behind it.

"Brittany," Santana says, voice trembling. "You shouldn't be up there."

It sounds like a plea.

"It's fine," Brittany says. "They don't mind. They're used to me."

But no matter what Brittany says, Santana can't dismiss the dizzy, horrified feeling she gets imagining what might happen if Brittany were to fall into the pen or if one of the elephants were to snatch at Brittany with its trunk.

"Brittany," she says feebly.

Brittany stares at Santana, really looking at her in that way that makes Santana feel seen like nothing else in the world does. Brittany's brow furrows into a quizzical expression, as if she finds it strange that Santana cares at all where she sits. The corners of her mouth curl a bit. Briefly, Santana wonders what Brittany might have to smile about, but then Brittany speaks.

"I'll come down if you like, darlin'," she says sweetly.

In the next second, Brittany heaves her left leg back over the palisade and slides down the log like a fireman would a pole. Her feet find the bulwark beneath her, and she skitters down it, jumping the last step so that she lands beside Santana, alighting on the grass with feline grace.

Brittany sets a hand on Santana's shoulder and looks her deep in the eyes. She seems to recognize the fact that Santana is shaking at the same moment Santana does. Brittany frowns. "You okay?" she asks.

It's the kind of thing Puck would never ask if he had frightened Santana.

(It's the kind of thing he didn't ask when he frightened her.)

Santana nods.

"I really didn't mean to scare you at all this time," Brittany says earnestly, her hand still flat on Santana's back. "I'm sorry."

"I—I just didn't want you to fall," Santana stammers.

(She can't say all the things she means, so it will have to do.)

Brittany bites her lip. Her hand slides from Santana's shoulder down her arm, linking their pinky fingers again. Santana thrills at Brittany's touch. She feels the same warm interest in Brittany from before; she and Brittany stand so close together that Santana can see where Brittany's eyelashes turn from honey to sunlight.

"You don't like elephants much, do you?" Brittany asks, scrunching her nose again, like she did in the tent.

Another sweet pang plays through Santana, the start to a song she can't quite place. Santana thinks for a moment before speaking.

For as much as the elephants scare her, she must admit to herself that there is a strange, bandy-legged beauty to them. She doesn't like Brittany getting too close to the big brutes, of course, but she can see the magnificence of them from a distance. There exists a terrible and wonderful splendor in something so vast and yet so mild.

"I think I like them from back here," Santana says honestly, earning a real smile from Brittany.

"Wanna see the other prettiest place?" Brittany asks.

(Santana knew she would ask.)

* * *

><p>Brittany won't tell Santana where the pretty place is.<p>

"It's a secret," she singsongs, leading Santana away from the elephant pen around the big top.

Brittany wears a funny smile that somehow seems both shy and brave at once and swings her and Santana's hands between them, clasped at the pinky fingers, like a hammock swaying in the wind. Whenever Santana looks at Brittany, she finds Brittany looking back at her, lips tucked into her mouth, eyes flitting over Santana's face like they did yesterday at the junction of the three tents. Brittany's nervous excitement causes Santana to feel nervous and excited in turn, like a child to whom an adult has promised a surprise.

When Brittany stops at the backstage area opposite the one where Santana waited out the show yesterday, Santana simply waits, wondering if Brittany will find some way to make this place beautiful for her or maybe lead her on to somewhere else more apropos the promised destination.

"Hold up," Brittany says, dropping Santana's hand and approaching an aperture like the one through which Santana watched the evening show last night. Brittany ducks her head inside the big top, checking left and right while Santana waits at her shoulder.

The big top now boasts its full height, its frame covered in pretty pinwheel canvas, the whole tent regal against the morning sun. It stands silent save for the nearly imperceptible flutter of the breeze playing at its flaps, the pulsating construction noise that emanated from it before gone in the stillness of the late morning.

"All clear," Brittany says, apparently satisfied that the supes have abandoned the place. She gestures for Santana to join her in entering the big top, wearing a sly grin.

Honestly, Santana can't imagine what Brittany might find so pretty inside the circus tent. While Santana very much appreciates the full spectacle of the circus performances, she finds nothing remarkable about the space in which they take place, which consists of little more than wooden bleachers, empty rings, a dirt floor, and the unmanned trapeze platforms, in itself.

Brittany leads Santana through the darkness at the back of the big top.

"Close your eyes and make a wish," she says.

(And Santana does.)

(And Santana does.)

Brittany peels away from Santana, leaving her side, but continues to speak to her, using her sure voice as a guide: "Come on, Santana. Just a few steps more. There you go! Just wait 'til you see it, darlin'."

Santana steps without knowing to where she goes, trusting Brittany to direct her and keep her from falling. She breathes in the scents of the big top—dried hay, stale dirt, and stained fabric—and takes a few steps forward before the blackness behind her closed eyes shifts to an orange-pink plane of shapes. Suddenly, the air around her feels slightly warmer than it did before.

"Open your eyes, Santana."

Three pillars of light immediately attract Santana's attention, brilliant against the gloom, stretched from floor to ceiling, each so bright so as to nearly appear solid. The pillars shine down parallel to the three massive wooden mainstays holding up the canopy of the tent, focused through oculi at the peaks of the domes over the rings; dust motes swim through the light like moths through air.

Brittany stands beneath the tallest pillar, showered in an aureole of white. The light curls around the angles of her face and illuminates the tips of her hair; it almost seems to shine from her person.

_(Oh benignísimo Ángel.)_

"Come on, darlin'," Brittany says, inviting Santana to join her where she stands.

Santana obeys, unable to blink or look away from Brittany as she walks forward, feeling as drawn to Brittany as a bird to sky. Brittany grins and steps out from under the light once Santana reaches her side, offering Santana nodding encouragement to play in the light herself. Gingerly, Santana extends her hand to the pillar, half expecting it to feel as heavy and pressing as a stream of water when she touches it. Instead, she finds the light warm and weightless, so effulgent that it nearly sears her vision to behold.

"So this is your other prettiest place?" Santana whispers, as reverent as if she had entered a cathedral, enraptured by the way the light filters through her fingertips, shining from her nails, curling over her wrist, backlighting the thin skin between her fingers a warm, opaque pink.

"Not quite," Brittany says, her wily grin from the tent returning to her in an instant. Santana stares at her, confused, and Brittany points. "Up there," she says, indicating the trapeze platforms.

Santana's stomach drops.

Before Santana can ask Brittany if this is another joke, Brittany bounds over to the bottom of the ladder hanging from the platform closest to them. "It looks so beautiful up there," she says worshipfully. "I've never shown it to anyone before—even though I bet the Dragon Changs know it's beautiful because they use the trapeze swings after lunch for the matinee."

Her words come out quickly and she hangs from the bottom of the ladder, bouncing a little where she stands.

The truth is that Santana has never climbed a ladder before in her life. She has also never scaled any height higher than the second story of the bachelor cottage—and, even then, only by stairs.

"You won't regret it even for a second, darlin'," Brittany says in a more serious tone than before. She looks at Santana in the same deep, considerate way she did yesterday. "I'll go up the ladder behind you. I'll look after you the whole way."

The sweetness in Brittany's voice tugs at something in Santana's chest, and Santana hesitates, hung up between her own fear and her immense trust of Brittany, who has yet to lead her wrong at all. Santana stares up at the platform, dazzled by its height and curious about what she might see perched atop it.

(Santana has read about adventures for years, but she's never had one of her own before.)

She draws a breath.

"Okay," she consents before she can change her mind.

In the next minute, Santana finds herself balancing on the bottom rung of the ladder, Brittany standing just behind her, a hand at Santana's back, bracing Santana as she begins her ascent. Santana cranes her neck to see up to the platform and immediately feels woozy; she must have over a hundred steps left to climb. As soon as her hold weakens, Brittany stabilizes her.

"You all right, darlin'?" Brittany asks.

Santana knows that if she wasn't all right, Brittany would let her down in an instant—but Santana doesn't want to step down; she wants to see the lights, and, more than that, she wants to do something brave.

Santana's grandmother would say a hundred prayers to _la Sagrada Familia_ if she could see what her granddaughter had determined to do, and Santana's father would counsel his daughter to show more prudence in her choices if she even as much as mentioned the fifty foot ladder to him in passing, but neither one of them is here now.

Santana is here, and so is Brittany.

"Yes," Santana says in answer to Brittany's question, and even though she sounds more courageous than she feels, she doesn't waste any more time waiting. She reaches above her head, grabbing a rung and pulling herself up. She feels a lurch in her stomach, like she does in the mornings on the train. Brittany's hand stays at her back as she takes her first step along the ladder.

For as anxious as it makes Santana to climb, she also can't help but feel slightly thrilled and as if she will come to something good for her daring. Once she surpasses Brittany's reach, Brittany gives her a cheer and clasps onto the ladder behind her.

"That's it, Santana," Brittany encourages. "Just keep going, nice and steady."

As Santana climbs, she realizes that the ladder stands at just the slightest incline, which actually makes it easier to ascend the higher up she goes. The stability of the rungs both amazes and emboldens her; she can feel Brittany's weight behind her, but, more than that, she can feel Brittany's excitement, urging her ever onward.

She passes five rungs and then ten and then stops counting, starting to find a rhythm to her ascent. For a second, she feels like someone brand new—infinitely far away from and different than the scared little girl who once lived sequestered in the very prim and harmless bachelor cottage. Giddiness flutters, winged, in her belly.

"You coming, Brittany?" Santana teases, increasing her speed, and Brittany just laughs in reply, amused at Santana's enthusiasm.

But then.

Santana slips.

One second, she scurries up the ladder, teasing Brittany, smiling, and the next she reaches forward to grab a rung and only finds air.

Her hand falls and her body follows, knees colliding with the rungs in front of them, feet scrabbling to catch a hold when her hand can't do the same. Her belly swoops and she gasps, with no time to even scream. She hears Brittany start behind her and feels a tremor on the ladder as Brittany lurches forward. First Santana's chin and then her breastbone hit a rung. Her arms catch onto the ladder past the elbows.

She stops mid-fall.

The collision expels all the air from her lungs. Her body turns rigid in an instant. Her mind moves slower than the moment, and she braces for impact before she realizes that she's already hit something and that she isn't slipping anymore. Brittany's hand wraps around her ankle. Santana's heart beats freight train-fast and loud.

_Oh God._

"Santana?" Brittany says, voice high and fluttery as bird's wings.

Santana can't answer; her breath has yet to return. Her heartbeat drowns out everything. She clings to the ladder in front of her, paralyzed.

"Santana," Brittany says again, her voice still shaking. "Santana, you stay right where you are, darlin'. We're almost to the top, and I'm gonna come around and help you up, okay?"

At Brittany's word, Santana can't help but look: her eyes skim up the ladder, and she realizes, much to her surprise, that only five rungs separate her from the platform. Before Santana can stop herself, she also hazards a glance downward and sees the great height which spans between herself and the ground splayed out in full below her for the first time. As she does so, her stomach clenches, and she scrambles to find a better hold on the ladder. Her whole body thrums to her deer-quick heartbeat.

"Brittany?" Santana whimpers, not quite sure what Brittany can do to help, but desperate to hear her voice again.

"Just stay put," Brittany instructs, as though Santana would do otherwise.

In the next second, Brittany moves, her weight shifting as she spins around the ladder until she hangs from the underside of the apparatus. Santana gasps, shocked and panicked now more for Brittany than for herself, but Brittany pays no mind to the danger. Instead, Brittany hurriedly scales the ladder, pulling herself up in a single strong motion until her hands find the same rung as Santana's and Brittany's face comes parallel to hers, making it seem as if the two girls look at each other through an open window.

It's the closest they've come to each other so far.

Santana can feel Brittany's breath on her face.

"You okay, darlin'?" Brittany asks, brow screwed up with concern, visage still somehow so beautiful that Santana forgets to answer her at first. Brittany's eyes are even more stunning up close than from afar, with little hints of cornflower and tiger gold flecked against sky. Santana doesn't know quite how she can go from feeling so much fear in one second to so much warm, waiting interest in the next, but somehow she finds herself back on Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

She nods, and Brittany smiles at her, pleased.

"All right," Brittany says. "Just one second."

She hoists herself up past Santana, the tatty calico of her dress sliding over the slats just in front of Santana's face. Brittany twists back around to the upside of the ladder once she makes it above Santana's head. In a single quick motion, she slithers onto the platform, and then spins on her belly, so as to face toward Santana.

"Give me your hand," Brittany says, extending her own hand to Santana, bracing herself against the lip of the platform.

Santana expects Brittany to simply pull her up, quick and easy, moving out of the way to make room for her on the deck. Instead, Brittany tugs Santana to the top of the ladder but remains directly in front of her, looking at Santana with an inimitable luster and hopefulness in her features. For a second, Santana catches a glimpse of something deep and familiar and wonderful at the back of Brittany's eyes, but then Brittany follows through on her motion, and Santana rises up to her.

Brittany meets Santana with a kiss.

Their mouths only touch for an instant—just long enough for Santana to register the plush of Brittany's lips and the humidity of her breath upon Santana's skin—but Santana still feels something sweet pulse all the way through her. Brittany's nose brushes the bow of Santana's cheek, her chin the round of Santana's chin. Santana's stomach somersaults, and she swallows her breath.

With all her frights throughout the day, Santana had thought that she was already awake, but now she finds herself mistaken: this kiss is what awakens her, stirring her from the sleep of a whole lifetime.

_A first kiss_, she thinks, breathless.

Brittany pulls away.

"What was that for?" Santana asks stupidly. She opens her eyes.

(When had she closed them?)

Brittany grins without replying and pulls Santana onto the platform deck beside her. They both breathe heavily, as if they had run a race. Brittany offers Santana her prettiest cat smile, glancing at Santana's lips and eyes.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Brittany asks, sounding just as rushed and golden as Santana feels.

Santana wants to tell Brittany yes—she wants to say that Brittany can tell her anything—but a noise on the ground breaks the moment.

"Ladybird?"

Puck's voice rises from the floor of the big top up to the platform.

Santana's whole face falls. For a moment, she had forgotten that Puck or anything except Brittany existed at all.

Puck calls out again, his voice echoing against the bleachers and the empty hollows of the big top sprawl. "Ladybird?" he shouts. "Ladybird? You in here?"

Santana stiffens, startled, and looks to Brittany, who peers over the edge of the deck. Santana follows her gaze to find Puck wandering near the back of the big top, his hat in his hands. He wipes his brow, wearing a hard, exasperated expression.

"Ladybird! The lunch bell will ring in five minutes! If you ain't in here, I'm giving up!" he calls.

Santana has never felt so many emotions before at one time in her life.

Part of Santana still reels with confusion, stuck between the instant of her fall and Brittany's kiss, dizzy with exhilaration. Part of her hates Puck for arriving just as Brittany had wanted to tell her something so undoubtedly important. Another part of her feels windswept and enraptured in something vaster, wider, and deeper than herself. Still another part of her feels caught, like the rules have finally found her after she had evaded them all morning.

Most of her just feels Brittany, though—just the sweetest hum of her, still pressed in echo upon Santana's lips.

If Santana had her way, she would hide from Puck all day.

She glances over to Brittany, awaiting her instructions, and finds Brittany wearing an amused expression, like someone who's just lost a round of cards but still intends to win the game later.

"I guess it is after noon after all," Brittany says dreamily, looking out at the pillars of light, about which Santana had forgotten until just that moment.

Brittany was right: from this vantage point, the light looks ever more resplendent than it does from the ground, with little arcs of blue, green, and red cutting through the white spilling through the apertures at the top of the tent. The light feels so warm and close that Santana thinks she would like to just stay here with Brittany forever, wrapped in it like a blanket.

Her thoughts must show on her face.

Brittany offers Santana a sympathetic smile. "We really ought to go to lunch," she says quietly. "I forgot I was hungry until just now."

"You forgot?" Santana asks, amused.

"Well," Brittany says, shrugging her shoulders. Her ears flush pink, and she looks down at her hands, suddenly shy.

For as much as Santana hates to admit it, she feels hungry, too. She glances down at Puck again and sighs, half-wishing that he could have forgotten about her just now like he did this morning and half-grateful to him for keeping her and Brittany from missing both lunch and the fair. Santana gives Brittany a consenting nod and waits for Brittany to slide onto the ladder before her.

Santana feels great trepidation scaling the ladder again so soon after her recent scare but also markedly braver than she did before, the imprint of Brittany's kiss still fresh upon her lips. Somehow, she finds the descent easier to negotiate in her mind than the ascent, with each step bringing her closer to the ground and to safety.

Brittany goes along before Santana and hops to the turf from about ten rungs up, landing heavily at the bottom of the ladder; Santana takes all the steps to the last. As soon as Santana has her balance, Brittany links their pinkies together and leads Santana toward Puck at the back of the tent.

"Puck!" Brittany calls, getting his attention.

When he turns to face the girls, Puck appears both relieved to have found Santana and surprised to see her in Brittany's company. Vaguely, it occurs to Santana that she has yet to tell Puck anything about her encounters with Brittany or that, since yesterday, Brittany has become her friend. Annoyance quickly replaces Puck's relief. Santana finds that she dislikes the way Puck looks at Brittany immensely.

(She remembers her first night at the circus, when Puck called Brittany and her father strange.)

"Ladybird! What you doing hiding in here?" Puck says, putting his hat back on his head. He scowls first at Brittany and then at Santana. "I've been searching all over for you for a half-hour! You would have missed lunch—"

"You go to lunch," Brittany interrupts. "I'll make sure Santana gets there. You just go on ahead."

Puck looks at Brittany as if he's never seen her before. His face darkens with suspicion, and Santana holds her breath, suddenly worried that Puck might somehow know that she and Brittany spent all afternoon skiving chores and trespassing in places they oughtn't to have gone. In the end, Puck's hunger seems to win out over his distrust.

"All right," he says. "I'll see you ladies at the mess pit." He tips them his hat and turns away.

(Santana can't say she's sad to see him go at all.)

Even though Santana feels as if she has a million questions to ask Brittany, somehow their walk back to the tent becomes a silent one, with Santana allowing her thoughts to carry her away and Brittany maintaining the strange, new shyness that came over her when Puck appeared in the big top tent. The sun glares down on them as they exit the big top and cross the midway, feeling brighter by contrast after they spent such a long while in the brown light of the indoors.

Guilt nags low in Santana's belly, like she's done something wrong or somehow been discourteous. Her mind turns to the morning and breakfast in the mess pit, to Puck's grabbing hands and vulgarity. As she and Brittany reenter the residential camp, Santana finds herself feeling more and more ashamed and uncomfortable in her skin, like she put on wet wool clothing and then stood in the sun to dry it. She squirms at Brittany's side, thinking too much about everything.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she asks desperately, just as she and Brittany get to within a yard of her tent.

Brittany nods, wearing a quizzical expression, apparently surprised with how serious Santana sounds. She drops Santana's pinky to open the tent flaps for her, then ushers Santana inside the tent, checking over her shoulder to make sure that they're alone.

Santana hardly waits for Brittany to step inside the tent with her before she blurts it out.

"Puck and I aren't really married."

She doesn't wait for Brittany to respond before she goes on.

"We aren't really married, but Puck says we're as good as married because no preacher would ever marry us anyhow, and everyone around here thinks we're man and wife, as it is. But we're not married and I just... I just..."

Her sentence fades away as she can't find the words. She wants to apologize somehow for what happened at the mess pit this morning, but she doesn't know quite where to begin. Santana looks helplessly to Brittany.

To her astonishment, she finds Brittany smiling—not her full smile but an amused smirk.

"Santana," Brittany says, "that is the silliest thing I've ever heard! Just because Puck says you're married, it doesn't mean you are—not if you don't want to be."

She speaks in her just so-voice and seems so completely sure about what she says that it takes Santana aback.

"It doesn't?" Santana asks.

Brittany just laughs, sounding somehow relieved. She shakes her head at Santana, as if Santana is both wonderful and hopeless.

"Of course it doesn't," she says. "Noah Puckerman never even asked you if you wanted to marry him, did he? And I bet he never even gave you a wedding ring, either, huh?"

In spite of herself, Santana laughs, all of her worry from before gone in an instant. When Brittany puts it that way, everything Puck told Santana in the tent yesterday suddenly seems impossibly foolish.

"He didn't," Santana confirms, thankful to Brittany in ways she can't even explain.

Brittany flashes Santana her wiliest smile and bends down to the ground, snatching something up from amidst the sewing supplies that still litter the grass in the tent before Santana can fully see what that something is.

"Give me your hand," Brittany instructs for the second time in the day.

Santana obeys this time, just like she did before, holding out her right hand for Brittany to take.

Brittany shakes her head. "Other one," she says and Santana obliges her.

Brittany flashes Santana the same giddy smile she did just before she kissed Santana at the big top, and, for a second, Santana wonders if Brittany might kiss her again. Instead, Brittany produces a length of red thread leftover from their sewing project from inside her grasp. Then, she both neatly and deftly ties the thread onto Santana's third finger after the thumb, looping it around twice and knotting it into a bow, as one would a shoelace. The thread fits Santana's finger snugly but not too tightly at all.

Pleased with her work, Brittany grins. "See?" Brittany says. "Now you and I are just as married as you and Noah Puckerman."

Her voice sounds warm and honeyed, pretty in its evenness.

Santana knows what Brittany really means, of course, but somehow her ears only hear something else. Everything in her rises to meet Brittany, like a choir will rise to greet its director as he takes his place at the rostrum. She feels a thrill and holds her breath, wanting without knowing what.

"Brittany," Santana whispers.

But Brittany doesn't wait for her to say any more than that.

"I'll see you at the show, darlin'," she says. "Enjoy your lunch."

And, without another word and before Santana can catch up to the moment, Brittany disappears out the tent flaps just as suddenly and unexpectedly as she appeared through them this morning, leaving Santana behind, dizzy.

(Breathless.)

* * *

><p>By the time Santana joins Puck at the mess pit for lunch, the more part of the company has already finished eating. Santana feels glad to see that Puck at least saved her a plate, fully aware that Ma Jones would not take kindly to her making a habit of turning up late to every meal.<p>

Today's fare consists of what Puck calls a "shepherd's pie," with mashed potatoes, meat, and vegetables all stewed together from the Dutch ovens. Thankfully, Puck seems to have forgiven Santana for hiding from him earlier; now he jaws to her, droll and affable, about how he and Sam very nearly deprived Finn of his trousers when the three of them commenced an impromptu wrassling match after they finished their morning work.

Though Puck tells his story in a very boisterous and affected manner, Santana finds it impossible to listen to him; she continually scans the crowds for Brittany. Though Santana checks and rechecks each face amidst the assembled company, she finds Brittany nowhere. She also can't help but note that Brittany's father isn't anywhere in the mess pit, either.

In the half-hour between the end of lunch and the start of the show, Santana returns the finished tunics and refitted sewing kit to Mrs. Schuester at the dressing tent, taking her little tablecloth knapsack and card deck with her as she goes. She holds her breath as Mrs. Schuester inspects her and Brittany's handiwork for flaws.

"These will do," Mrs. Schuester snips, her voice harsh, even though she apparently approves of the job. "Now hurry along and get ready for the show. Ken told me he would like to see you at your booth before the fair starts."

Somewhere between fireflies, train rides, elephants, and scaling the trapeze, Santana had forgotten all about Ken's threats from last night, but now she can't help but remember that Ken wanted to have her fired. Her stomach turns over as she wonders whether or not Ken spoke to Mr. Adams about her deplorable performance last night. She considers what will happen to her if she suddenly finds herself no longer employed as a gypsy after just one show. If Ken turns her out of the circus, what could Puck do about it? What could Santana do? She can't go back to New York. There's nothing there for her.

With immense trepidation, Santana travels from the dressing tent directly to her gazebo, where, sure enough, she finds Ken awaiting her, arms crossed over his bloated belly and a scowl fixed tightly on his face beneath his bowler cap. When he sees Santana, Ken shakes his head, looking at Santana the way one would something unpleasant stuck to the bottoms of his shoes.

"You're late!" Ken snaps, though the fair has yet to start and the acts that occupy the booths neighboring Santana's gazebo haven't even arrived on the midway at all.

"Sir?" Santana says, her stomach turning cold and thick. She steels herself to hear the news that she's lost her job.

"We'll have none of your muddling today, little missus! I'm here to keep an eye on you," Ken thunders, wagging one of his porcine fingers in Santana's face. "Mr. Adams wants no more foul-ups! That's why I'm here: to keep you in line! One more mistake and we'll turn you out faster than yesterday's piss pots, you hear?"

While Santana feels immensely relieved that Mr. Adams will give her one more chance to perform, Ken's vulgarity affronts her. She stammers, "Y-yes, sir."

"Good!" Ken snarls, his face blotchy and sweating like bad meat hanging in a butcher's locker. "Just remember: I'll be watching."

* * *

><p>Honestly, Ken makes it impossible for Santana to forget his presence, even if she would like to.<p>

All throughout the morning fair, he hovers at the edge of Santana's gazebo, snuffing loudly any time he takes offense at one of her actions—which happens rather frequently, as it were.

Whereas yesterday in Worthington, Santana's act attracted a crowd of forty persons, today she draws a crowd of at least seventy, a fact that would daunt her, save for the secret she learned from her previous performances: namely, that if she simply offers her patrons sound advice mixed in with vague promises of both success and danger, the patrons will verify her readings as true, never mind their ambiguity.

For her first reading, Santana promises a farmer that he will experience a fine harvest in the upcoming season, though only if he can avoid oversaturated ground, remembering the river she saw coming into town from the train depot. For her second reading, she advises a cleverly-dressed businessman to take only calculated risks in his ventures, lest he lose his fortune. The crowd seems to delight in Santana's "powers," remarking at how very sage and knowing she is, tender years notwithstanding.

It's only when Santana's third patrons approach her table that Santana feels the first ribbon of doubt slither through her stomach.

A young man helps his pregnant wife take the seat across from Santana.

"I would like you to read for the child," the man requests.

Santana blanches. So far today, no one has even mentioned the cards to her, a phenomenon which Santana attributes to the general conservatism of the population of Mankato, which seems in character more in keeping with the city architecture than with its new technologies. However, at the man's word, Santana must wonder if he means that he would like her to spread the tarot deck for his unborn child, as she can't very well read the palm of a babe still in the womb.

She splutters, "I—"

The man seems to realize the confusion in his statement. "If you can!" he says quickly. "If you can read my wife's palm and tell us about the baby, we would quite appreciate it. We have encountered some difficulties. This will be our first child, you see, and we're very anxious."

He looks at Santana with a great earnestness behind his eyes, and, as he does so, Santana both rejoices that the man doesn't expect her to read tarot for his child—she wouldn't and couldn't—and also feels her heart wither because it strikes her, for the first time, just how terrible it is to lie to someone who trusts you.

Though this man and his wife are strangers to Santana whom she would likely fail to recognize in a crowd even as early as tomorrow, she can't help but feel a pang when she realizes how exceedingly much they want her to guarantee good things for them.

(Santana can't even guarantee good things for herself.)

The couple hardly appears older than Santana at all. They dress modestly, in the kinds of clothing townspeople wear when they are not gentility but nevertheless comfortable in their station. The man dons a boater hat like a college boy, still young enough that such headwear doesn't look silly on him, and the woman sports a pretty flowered bonnet.

Though Santana has only just set eyes on the woman, Santana can see the swell in the woman's face. While the woman would probably naturally be very thin, she currently bears a water weight in the tip of her nose and along the borders of her jaw. The woman looks at Santana with the same hopeful timidity as her husband.

Santana doesn't want to lie to the couple, but when she opens her mouth to speak to them, she finds Ken standing just over the man's shoulder, mouthing emphatically to her that she will tell the man yes, she can perform the reading, or Ken will have Santana's _goddamn nigger'd hide to line his tent_.

She splutters, "Of course, sir! Yes, of course! The... aura... of an unborn child is very strong."

The couple smile at Santana, relieved and eager, and the woman commends her palm to Santana to examine. Santana draws a breath and closes her eyes, trying to convince herself that of all the lies she has told in the past three weeks and of all the lies that she has had told to her over the course of her whole lifetime, this lie will just be one more—and a happy lie at that.

When she uncloses her eyelids, she refuses to meet the gazes of her young patrons again and instead focuses on crisscrossed creases in the woman's palm and upon the act of spinning falsehood into gold without having any fairies to help her.

"You will... have a son," Santana promises, knowing that she will never learn either the accuracy or the inaccuracy of her own statement. The crowd around her titters, excited at the specificity of her supposed prophecy. "He will... grow strong. He will follow in your profession."

"What of the birth?" the woman breathes, and, though she knows she ought not to do it, Santana looks up at the woman, finding a deep fear and even deeper hope behind the woman's eyes. Santana strokes the back of the woman's hand with her thumb.

"You must find yourself a competent doctor... and well rest yourself beforehand," Santana says, wondering if Mankato is a big enough city that it has a hospital in it. She feels the woman's hand tremble in her own; Santana trembles, too. She bites her lips into her mouth. "You will... you ought to pray," she counsels, not quite sure if she believes in prayer any more than she believes in her own perspicacity or ability to tell the future.

The man says, "Thank you."

The crowd claps.

(Santana wonders if the circus isn't just a place that makes lies look pretty.)

* * *

><p>Before Santana can seat another patron for a reading, the show bell rings and the crowds disperse. Ken mutters something about how Santana can <em>keep her damn hide for now<em> and motions for her to pack up her table and follow him toward the backstage. Though Santana would like to spend the show at the backstage area closest to the menagerie—where she must suppose that Brittany and her father stay during their downtime—she doesn't know how to broach the topic with Ken, who seems to hate Santana just as much for not ruining the morning fair as he would have hated her if she had ruined it indeed.

Just like yesterday, Santana finds nearly one-hundred performers in various poses crowded around the backstage area, some of them cinching up their costumes for the performance, others of them joking with one another. Just like yesterday, Rachel calls out to Santana as soon as she makes it to within ten feet of where Rachel and Puck stand.

"Santana! Goodness! There you are," Rachel says, as though Santana has somehow arrived late, even though the bell has just rung.

"We wanted to go over the choreography with you before the show starts," Puck explains.

"You know, just once more," Rachel clarifies.

It's an insult disguised as help, but Santana supposes she deserves it. She gives a consenting nod, knowing that she must make the most of Mr. Adams' leniency with her failures yesterday if she wants to keep her job today.

"All right," Puck says, using the end of his unlighted staff to draw three adjacent circles in the dirt between their feet. "We enter here," he says, pointing with the end of the stick. "And we walk to here. You stop right here at the end of the song—just wait for Rachel's cue. I'll go around you."

Honestly, the diagram teaches Santana nothing she didn't know before. Santana wants to tell Puck that it isn't the choreography that fussed her last night but rather the fire, which is something that no crude sketch in the dirt can make safe for her.

"Really, Santana, it's very simple," Rachel says, using the same voice one would use to assure a child that a visit to the doctor won't hurt him, even though it might.

Despite Rachel and Puck's encouragements, when the show bell rings, Santana suddenly feels perhaps even more nervous than she did yesterday at the evening performance, considering her new probation. She hates the way the flames lick meanly over her flail. She hates how she can feel their heat even when she holds them at arm's length. She hates herself for fearing them.

"Show time!" Puck crows as he and Rachel crowd Santana to the opening at the back of the tent, pushing her through it.

The audience erupts at the sight of more circus folk pouring into the rings for the procession, giving voice to a single white-hot shout. The lights shining from the edges of the rings temporarily blind Santana, and brassy music fills her ears. Her heart beats like the applause of the audience, frenetic and too, too hard.

The three elephants already parade around the rings, with Methuselah plodding along in front of Deborah and Bathsheba, wearing a tall, blue plume atop his head. He harrumphs at Santana as she crosses his path.

Santana wills herself not to seize up as colors, sounds, and motion blur around her. She swings her flail listlessly back and forth, watching it draw streaks of yellow, blue, and white across the air before her, but she still refuses to fully twirl it as Rachel does hers.

As the gypsies enter what Rachel called Ring One yesterday, Santana simply focuses on taking one step at a time, keeping to the rhythm of the music. Her stomach feels clenched in knots, and she sweats beneath the stage lights, beads of perspiration running in rivulets along the curves of her face and heat pricking hot, hot needlepoint at her underarms.

Santana makes it nearly all the way to the front of the ring—counting each step as she goes—before a sharp, loud noise blares somewhere to her right. On impulse, she jerks to look at the source of the sound, but, instead of finding it, she finds Brittany, framed perfectly in her vision between the tall legs of a man on stilts and the hoops the young, sweet-faced juggler from yesterday's fair tosses lazily in time to the song.

For some reason, Santana hadn't expected to see Brittany during the grand procession, though she remembers from yesterday's matinee that Brittany takes part in the act, just like all the other performers. Seeing Brittany where she hadn't looked for her surprises Santana.

(She gasps.)

The sight of Brittany under stage lights immediately recalls to Santana the sight of Brittany under the pillars of light in a far emptier big top. She remembers the kiss with her lips, and her mind and something in her chest that beats to Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, suddenly thrilled and braver than before.

Santana gives her flail a bigger swing than she has so far and proceeds with Rachel to the front of the ring, waiting until the music fades and Rachel gestures for her to follow to finally release her breath.

When she looks again, Brittany is gone.

* * *

><p>Outside the big top, Puck celebrates Santana's first successful run through the grand processional, whooping and catching Santana around the waist, lifting her from the ground. With light in his eyes, he spins her through the air like one of Degas' pretty ballerinas.<p>

"You did it, ladybird!" he says. "Good show, good show! We'll make a circus girl out of you after all!"

Santana laughs at the swoop in her stomach and also at her own success, which she privately credits to Brittany for inciting her courage.

(She makes a point to thank Brittany when next she sees her.)

Though Puck invites Santana to join him at the fire, she demurs his offer, particularly after she sees that Puck has his tobacco tin tucked in his belt. Not long after Puck quits her company, Rachel also abandons Santana in order to greet her father and the quadroon manservant on the edge of the backstage area; she says that needs to practice her arpeggios in preparation for her act.

With both of her gypsy companions gone, Santana finds herself alone in a crowd of people, most of whom pay her no attention and a few of whom look at her with sour expressions fixed upon their faces. Conversations pop like corn all around her, none of them meant for Santana to hear, and circus loneliness washes over her, returning to her for the first time since Brittany stumbled into her tent earlier in the morning. Santana finds herself drifting, wandering amidst the company; eventually, she ends up at the aperture where the little circus children play.

The Flying Dragon Chang's act soars, already in progress, with the man gliding between the two suspended bars, graceful and aquiline, his musculature as impressive and marbled as that of a Hellenistic sculpture. Looking at the trapeze platforms returns the warm Brittany interest to Santana's belly and blood.

Brittany Pierce kissed her.

Since leaving the big top to join the company for lunch, Brittany's kiss has lingered on Santana's lips, as soft and staying as a promise whispered into one's ear just before she falls asleep. Since Santana has never enjoyed a friend before Brittany, she has also never enjoyed a kiss such as Brittany's before, either. She feels somehow as if Brittany has given her something very sweet and dear and finds herself wondering how she might best thank Brittany for such a pure and wonderful gift.

Her mind dances away to Brittany's circus, which is one of light and friendly elephants, flagging colors and sweet secret kisses. Santana wonders everything about Brittany, but also knows Brittany as an old penitent would her rosary beads—by touch and by motion, like the repetition of a prayer.

It isn't until the contortionists leave the stage at the end of the eighth act and Puck calls Santana's name that she realizes just how thoroughly she had allowed herself to forget everything except for the knife thrower's daughter and her kiss.

After her grand faux pas yesterday, Santana feels loath to attempt the gypsy act again. Nevertheless, her success during the grand processional makes Santana hopeful that she can perhaps perform the act adequately. As long as she focuses her willpower on reaching the front of the ring at the same time that Rachel does so, she can make it through the act, never mind the lameness of her motions with the flail.

Like yesterday, the gypsies enter the big top under the cover of darkness and take their places at the back of the center ring, backs turned to the audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen, from the darkest regions of Europe, I present to you a trio of gypsies most skilled in the arts of pyrotechnic artistry! To them, the touch of flame feels as but a friendly caress! They feed upon fire and bathe themselves in brimstone! Don't be alarmed by what you are about to see. Our gypsies are fire-proof! Watch them tame the flames!"

The gypsies turn into the wall of sound that the audience shouts ceiling-high. More people fill the bleachers in Mankato than they did in Worthington. They cheer and holler for the gypsies, clapping them forward, clamoring for them to do more and do it faster.

As Puck swoops into his circle dance and Rachel starts forward, Santana follows, pendulum-swinging her fire flail in front of her and keeping her eyes trained on the crowd, counting out threes at the back of her throat. She makes it through nearly four repetitions and mostly to the fore of the ring, feeling increasingly pleased with herself for each successful step.

A snag.

And then.

Santana trips, shins knocking against something about as tall as her ankle, toes kicking the unseen object noisily aside. She stumbles, feeling a mix of wet-hot-hard at the bottoms of her legs as her skirts tangle around whatever it is she hit. Metal clangs and steam rises with a cat-hiss from the floor as Santana falls, throwing out her arms to brace herself on impact.

Her knees collide with the lip of the ring, wood biting the joint through her clothes. The audience shrieks and, in the next second, the butts of Santana's palms catch dirt, scraping away the skin along her wrists in hard, hot tracks.

She tumbles forward awkwardly, her feet still on the ground and jumbled around what she only vaguely recognizes as one of the aluminum dousing buckets, while her torso sprawls over the edge of the ring.

Rachel screams alongside her, and Puck rushes forward.

In the confusion of her fall, all Santana can manage to do is wonder if she's caught fire.

"You're okay, ladybird," Puck rushes, grabbing Santana under the arms and pulling her quickly to her feet. "Up, up, up," he says, patting at her clothing, putting out flames that aren't there.

She certainly doesn't feel okay.

The deepest part of Santana's stomach trembles, rung like a small, brass bell, and both her insides and outsides quake and startle. Tears spring to her eyes, though she knows she isn't hurt. She can hardly move herself and gives over completely to Puck, who first strips Santana of the extinguished flail hanging limply from her right hand and then smoothes down her skirt, which had ridden up past her knees in her fall.

Santana registers the audience applauding her recovery but only barely; somehow they seem very far away and scarcely important at all.

"Get her off stage now!" Rachel hisses through clenched teeth.

"I'm going!" Puck snarls.

He and Rachel force Santana into a shallow bow alongside them, pushing down her head and then yanking her upright again like zealous Presbyterians baptizing an initiate. Without even waiting for the processional music to end, Puck drags Santana away from the front of the ring into the backstage area, Rachel still standing at the fore of the ring muttering "Faster! Faster! Faster!" as if they can't make an exit from her spotlight quickly enough. In the next minute, Rachel begins the Little Malibran act.

As Puck and Santana burst into the outdoor light, Santana feels like a drowning woman just come up from the water. She draws a great gulp of breath, her hands, knees, and chest still throbbing from her recent impact.

"Ladybird!" Puck says. "What in the Sam Hill was that?"

He isn't the only one who wonders.

Just beyond the open tent flaps, Ken stands before none other than Mr. Adams, gesticulating wildly to him, speaking in a hot, hushed voice that nevertheless carries far enough for Santana to hear Ken's every word: "... a menace! She'll ruin us! You have to let her go! For all I care, you can tell Noah Puckerman to hit the road with her! Damned good-for-nothing gypsies!"

Mr. Adams wears a tight expression. He casts a furtive glance in Santana's direction, but otherwise says nothing. When he speaks, he sounds surprisingly calm: "It's the matinee, Ken. And her second show. From what I hear, she's a hit on the midway. I won't fire the poor girl because she nearly scalded herself in front of the day audience. Mankato will have forgotten her misstep by the evening. And she will improve by this evening."

The last part sounds like a threat.

Before Ken can form a rebuttal, Mr. Adams walks away, headed toward the backstage closer to the menagerie. Santana feels almost more shaken watching Mr. Adams go than she did when she fell. Ken shoots Santana a savage look but says nothing to her, apparently too repulsed to even stand in her near presence.

"Ladybird," Puck says sternly, but Santana can't stand the thought of him yelling at her now, not after what just happened.

She doesn't wait for Puck to continue his thought before she stalks away from him, feeling as hard inside as a stone fortress.

"I know, all right?" she snarls, as if there were any question.

If anyone as much as looks at her, Santana suspects she'll scream. Even so, for as defensive as Santana feels toward everyone else, she mostly just feels livid with herself. She had known better than to make another mistake. She had known better than to ruin another circus.

Santana realizes she can't go far with the show still in progress and so only wanders to the aperture Puck showed her yesterday. Just like before, a bevy of small children crowd around the opening, taking turns playing with toys. Though several of the children look up with Santana as she approaches them, none of them mentions the tears on her face, a kindness for which she feels very grateful.

She takes a place at the edge of the tent opening, turning herself toward the darkness at the back of the big top both to hide her teary eyes and to focus on something aside from those very present memories of her most recent failure. She wraps her arms around her ribs so tightly that it hurts and wonders if she will ever go a day as part of this company without ruining something for someone.

(Or everyone.)

Rachel sings from the center of the ring, and perhaps Santana only imagines it, but somehow Rachel's voice sounds even more melancholic and aching than it did yesterday.

When Rachel plucks her highest E out of the stratosphere, the goblet on the stool stands firm, refusing to burst, despite her great volume. The audience titters and the maestro plays the note again.

Once more, Rachel matches it, drawing out the sound until finally the goblet on the stool quavers and bursts for reasons that have nothing to do with Rachel's bravado and everything to do with the crystal being too cold and too hot at once.

The expression Santana now knows as sad shame passes over Rachel's face as Rachel curtsies to the wild applause of the audience, taking in their thanks for something that she didn't do on her own power.

"Thank you, thank you! Our Little Malibran, everyone! Now that we've had our music, how about a little danger? Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a frontiersman skilled in the art of knife throwing, whose precision goes unmatched in these fine United States! I give to you Mr. Daniel S. Pierce and his beautiful daughter, Brittany, straight from the heart of Appalachia to the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus!"

The supes arrange the flat of wood and its prop in the ring as Brittany and her father emerge from the shadows. As she did yesterday, Brittany almost glides onto the stage, lively and pleased, the white petals of her pretty costume shushing over her long legs. Warm interest blooms in Santana's belly at the sight of her; briefly, Santana wonders how it is possible for Brittany to become ever more beautiful at their every encounter. Santana applauds loudly, though Brittany has yet to perform even one maneuver.

Like yesterday, Will the Ringmaster instructs the crowd to count out paces for Mr. Pierce as Brittany arranges herself in front of the target. At ten paces, Mr. Pierce halts. Brittany waves to the audience, signaling the start of the act, and, after just another second, Mr. Pierce heaves his first knife at her.

The knife hurtles through the air, blade descending at a sharp angle. Like yesterday, Santana's heart stops in her chest, unwilling to continue beating until it knows that Brittany's heart will continue to beat in this life along with it. The knife reflects the stage lights, suspended in the air.

_Thunk._

It lands true, settling just at Brittany's right ear.

Santana breathes and clutches her chest, all thought of her own failures gone, the tears dried on her face, her only concern now for Brittany's safety. Brittany remains in her astral pose as her father flips his second knife in his hand. His elbow jerks, and the blade lands hard.

_Thunk._

It embeds in the wood just above Brittany's right shoulder.

The next four throws come quickly.

_Thunk._

_Thunk._

_Thunk._

_Thunk._

They outline Brittany in a ring of steel, driving deep into the wood behind her. Like yesterday, Brittany collects the knives from behind her, dislodging them from the target with strong tugs, and returns the knives to her father before heading over to her satchel to procure her apple prop. After showing the apple to the crowd, Brittany resituates herself in front of the target and calmly places the apple atop her pretty hair.

In the next second, several things happen all at once, the first of which is that Mr. Pierce takes aim, but then something passes over him—a wavering that somehow reminds Santana of how Puck acted this morning, loose and off.

Whatever the wavering is, Santana disdains the looks of it and feels a bolt of prescient dread. However, before either she or anyone else can say aught, Mr. Pierce releases his knife, which flies in an unwieldy arc toward the target, rather unlike its usual straight shot.

Steel and stage light flash like photography against the center of the ring. Santana screams, her brain a step behind the moment, her heart five or ten or one-million steps ahead of it. Brittany jolts as the knife hits.

_Thunk._

"Brittany!"

Oh God.

The apple rolls on the ground, Brittany lying just beside it, sides heaving under her corset. The knife protrudes from the flat board, embedded to the hilt well inside the outline of the not-a-target's head.

Brittany is safe.

Santana can't bring herself to breathe or move. She holds perfectly still, a hawk-hunted rabbit in the center of a field, so stunned that it would not surprise her to find that her blood had stopped in her veins. For a split second, the audience of one-thousand people and all the assembled company remain absolutely silent. Mr. Pierce's hand extends, still outstretched toward the target.

In the next second, the audience erupts into equal parts cheers for Brittany's survival and boos for Mr. Pierce's misaim. Brittany peels herself from the ground, her pretty primrose mouth open as she gasps for breath. Her father meets her where she stands, latching onto Brittany's elbow, helping her get fully upright. He mutters something in Brittany's ear, and she nods frantically. Five knives still remain sheathed in his bandolier. The knife thrower and his daughter turn toward the bleachers and bow to the audience, earning mixed applause and jeers.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let's have another round of applause for Miss Brittany's safety! Good show!" Will the Ringmaster coaches, a waver in his voice.

Apparently, the act must end now that Mr. Pierce has made a mistake. Mr. Pierce retrieves his knife from the board while Brittany scoops up the apple from the ground. The supes emerge from the shadows to take the equipment away. As Mr. Pierce and Brittany scramble off stage, Santana could almost swear that Brittany slings a glance in her direction through the darkness at the back of the big top.

Only after Brittany and her father disappear from sight does Santana remember to breathe.

* * *

><p>Santana hardly registers it when Puck fetches her to join the final parade following the elephant act. He doesn't make her take her flail into the ring with her, perhaps because he can feel how her hands won't stop shaking. Instead, he just commands Santana to dance, and she does so without thinking, her body moving in time to the music, her mind still back in the awful moment when Brittany could have died.<p>

After the show, the company loiters in the backstage area, waiting for the audience to exit the big top, everyone tight-lipped and petulant, wearing blameful disappointment in the darkness of their eyes. Once the more part of the patrons quit the circus grounds, Ken arrives and summons the company back inside the big top, where they join the other group of performers from the second backstage area.

Ken ushers the performers to take seats in the bleachers, which they do, with Santana sandwiched between Puck and Rachel at her sides, a row of clowns before her and Rachel's father and the quadroon manservant seated at her back. Santana searches the assembly for Brittany, desperate to see her again and to check her wellbeing.

In her eagerness, Santana fails to see it when Mr. Adams appears before the group, having entered the big top through the box office doors. She only notices Mr. Adams' presence when he clears his throat—loudly.

On the first day she met him, Mr. Adams wore green. Yesterday, he wore scarlet. Today, he wears orange, his suit as bright and flamboyant as citrus. He looks even more like a lion than he ever has before.

"I have never seen such incompetence from a group of supposed professionals in my life!" he snarls, his booming voice filling the whole of the empty big top arena, causing several persons, including Santana, to flinch. "The clowns missed their second cue, the gypsies almost caught the whole damn ring on fire, Mr. St. James failed to make his tiger stand, and our knife thrower nearly impaled his daughter's head! Hopeless, all of you!"

Ken stands behind Mr. Adams, nodding vigorously, actually looking as though he delights in the fact that Mr. Adams must yell. Ken focuses on Santana in particular in the crowd, and she shrinks, wishing she could hide behind Puck's shoulder.

Mr. Adams continues his tirade.

"The whole matinee was a wash!" he thunders, shaking his fist at the group. "We can't afford this kind of idiocy, not with our financial position tenuous as it is! Mankato is supposed to be a big stop for us! We must recuperate our losses tonight at the evening show. Mr. Fabray will be in attendance, and we must show him that our enterprise is worth a damn if you all want to have paychecks come next month, do you hear?"

By this point, Mr. Adams sounds more desperate than angry. All the same, Santana cowers, feeling more than responsible for her part in the company's failures today.

After taking another loathing look at his employees, Mr. Adams storms away, Ken trailing sycophantically at his heels. As Mr. Adams goes, Santana's stomach curdles, and she shrinks down even farther in her seat, knowing full well that the more part of the company blames her for the magnificent catastrophe of the matinee performance—and rightfully so.

Puck peels Santana from the bench as the company disperses.

"Come on, ladybird," he says in a hard voice.

Santana follows after him, guilt gnawing at her belly.

* * *

><p>Though Santana would prefer to sulk and hide herself from the rest of the company in her shame until the evening show, Puck insists that she must practice her role in the gypsy act, so as to minimize the chance for misstep during her next performance. Just like yesterday, he takes her to the empty stretch of ground just beyond the mess area, determined to make Santana practice until she can perform the fire dance perfectly.<p>

Despite Santana's protests, Puck insists that she must practice with her flail lighted so that she can become accustomed to handling it. Santana can't help but suspect that Puck's sudden short temper has everything to do with Mr. Adams' reprimand to the group.

(Puck seems to honor Mr. Adams' opinion above the opinions of anyone else.)

"All right, ladybird. Count of three," Puck glowers once he has her flail lighted. He claps out a beat. "One, two, ready, go!"

Santana makes it through the first repetition without trouble, following Puck to the front of the crude circle he mapped out for her in the grass, but she finds it difficult to pay attention to Puck for any extended period of time. His crossness today puts Santana off, and she retreats from him in her mind, hiding away from the harshness in his voice and his criticisms of her slow gait and reluctance to swing her flail under the cover of her own thoughts.

Though Santana knows she ruined the matinee, she finds that she can't stand it when Puck treats her like an imbecile. Her own expression hardens and her chest tightens, walling up. She finds herself wishing that Brittany would come rescue her from this roughness, as per Brittany's most commendable habit.

Instantly, her thoughts turn to Brittany's performance at the matinee. She wonders what Brittany's father has said to her following his near miss. She hopes that he perhaps apologized.

"Ladybird!"

Santana jolts and finds Puck standing directly in front of her, his eyes blacker than Santana has ever seen them before. He snatches her flail away from her and douses it in the bucket he prepared. When she scoffs at his overboldness, he snarls at her, animal-angry.

"Ladybird, I don't know where you keep wandering off to, but you need to stop your goddamn daydreaming before you get you and everybody else killed! You almost swiped me with your flail!" he shouts. "You have any idea how dangerous it is, working with fire?"

When Santana doesn't answer, Puck looks away from her, exasperated, and tosses the doused flail harshly against the ground.

"Damn it, ladybird! I said 'Do you have any idea how dangerous—'?"

Santana rankles.

"Of course I know, you idiot!" she snaps, annoyed that Puck somehow has failed to realize that fire terrifies her despite how she panics every time he even so much as offers her a lighted match.

She feels furious at him for talking to her like she's some sort of cretin, even though she knows that he can hardly read better than the youngest schoolboy and has only the basest wit to his credit.

Santana can think circles around him!

She knows well enough that everyone in authority in the camp hates her and thinks her incompetent. She knows that she disappointed the company and ruined the show today. She knows the tenuousness of her position on the lists. She knows that no one wants her here, except for just one person.

She doesn't need Noah Puckerman to tell her about her failures when she knows them perfectly herself.

"Well then why are you acting so damn careless?"

"Well why won't you show me what to do instead of just expecting me to know?"

Puck and Santana's voices ring out so loud and sharp that some of the birds roosting in the trees around their ring take wing. Every circus person in the immediate vicinity stares at them, appalled at their volume and the ferocity of their words. Puck wears a dangerous expression, and Santana can't imagine she looks much different than he does.

"Ladybird, you come here right now!" Puck demands, pointing emphatically at the spot of ground in front of him as if Santana is a dog who must come at his call.

If Santana had any intention to apologize to Puck before, she certainly doesn't anymore. The tone of his voice and the way the other circus folk gape at her like they've never seen something so abhorrent in their lives harden her.

_"¡Aléjate de mí!"_

"Ladybird!" Puck says, but Santana doesn't wait around for him to give her anymore orders.

Instead, she blows past him, purposefully kicking over the water bucket he has laid out on the border of the ring, spilling its contents into the grass, and stalking away as quickly as she can without fully running. The circus folk gathered around the ring gape at her as if they worry she might bite them, but Santana doesn't care; she finds herself rapt in the high, hot clarity of the moment, too indignant to mind what anyone might think of her. She hears scandalized mutters, but she ignores them, hurrying away from everything and everyone.

Eventually, Santana traverses the boundaries of the campgrounds proper and comes to a stop just at the edge of the woods surrounding the prairie. She tries to hold onto her high, hot feelings for as long as possible because she knows that the cold shame that comes after them will crack her like Rachel's goblet on its stool. She doesn't want to cry again, not after yesterday. She paces frantically along the tree line, stepping through mottled shadow and sun, trying to retain the image of Puck's ugly snarl in her imagination to inspire her anger.

(Soon she remembers his last look: that of a frightened little boy.)

She draws a rattling breath, but doesn't cry. Though tears prick her eyes, she simply waits, breathing in waves, like the ocean.

After an untold while, she hears footsteps in the grass behind her.

"Hey, darlin'," Brittany says in her just-so voice.

Santana knows that if she looks at Brittany, she'll cry, so she doesn't allow herself to turn around. Instead, she stays facing towards the woods, observing how the trees can remain rooted to one spot but nevertheless move, a panorama of browns, greens, and deep gray shadows tremulous against the wind. Birds hop here and there, skimming branches and warbling. Bugs buzz, patrolling the border between the prairie and the tree line. Santana's throat tightens.

She means to greet Brittany, but she doesn't.

"Everybody hates me," she croaks, closing her eyes tightly at the first sting of tears.

For a second, Brittany remains quiet. She plods through the grass until she stands just behind Santana.

"They don't hate you," she says gently.

It's both the kindest and the falsest thing Brittany could say to Santana. It brings a low ache to Santana's chest.

"They kind of do, Brittany," Santana says, mostly to remind herself, lest she take Brittany's words too much and too quickly to heart.

"No, they don't," Brittany refutes. "Not really, anyway."

(The instant Santana sees Brittany, the hardness in her breast melts away.)

"They don't hate you," Brittany says seriously, looking at Santana and really seeing her. "It's just like circus magic, that's all."

Santana has no idea what Brittany means by _circus magic_. She stares, expectant.

Brittany laughs a little at Santana's expression—an agreeable laugh, like she enjoys everything that Santana does so much that she just can't keep her predilection to herself. Once her laughter fades away, she hums.

"At the circus, people don't bother to look past the first thing they see," she explains, eyes flitting over Santana's face with the same hummingbird interest as this morning. "You wear a hard face sometimes, so people think you're hard inside. They hear you yell, and it frightens them. They don't look under the tablecloth or at the edge of the stage or at all your little latches and secret drawers. They don't see all of the good things that you do."

Santana looks at Brittany. "Good things?" she asks in that same small voice from inside the tent, genuinely surprised that Brittany thinks she does anything good or worthy at all, considering her grand failures over the past two days.

Brittany nods, obviously pleased to have piqued Santana's interest. "Good things," she says plainly, "—like that you're so handy at sewing and that you're patient when you teach people to make new stitches and that you're the best fortuneteller Mr. Adams has ever hired."

Heat spreads over Santana's cheeks, and she looks at her toes, feeling Brittany-warm all over. In spite of herself, she smiles widely. She cannot for the life of her figure out how Brittany can manage to make her happy when only just a second ago she felt so low.

"But you haven't even seen me read fortunes!" she reaches, desperate to cover up her blush with something, somehow embarrassed that Brittany can cheer her up so easily.

Brittany laughs. "You're right!" she says, feigning shock. "Well, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?" She holds out her hand to Santana for an offering. In her same theatrically proper accent from the morning, she says, "Why, Miss Santana, won't you please read my palm?"

And Santana can't help but laugh.

She takes Brittany's hand in her own and grins. "But of course, Miss Pierce!"

The instant her skin touches Brittany's skin, Santana's stomach turns a somersault. Somehow, the sun feels warmer and the daylight brighter. Santana's giddy smile from before changes into a shy one. She wonders if Brittany can feel how hard her heart beats through the pads in her fingers or with them standing so close to one another like this.

She peers down at Brittany's palm, which is pale pink and long, with pencil-thin lines etched at its folds. Usually when Santana gives a palm reading, she simply considers what she knows about the person in question based on her appearance or what few identifying factors she may have gleaned about the person from their conversation, but now Santana finds that she has no answers for Brittany at all.

Since Brittany first picked Santana out of the crowd on Saturday night, Santana has felt this inexplicable familiarity with her, like even though everything Brittany does surprises Santana, nothing about Brittany in herself actually surprises Santana at all. Santana's body thrums to Brittany's tune. Her eyes and mind and the stirring in her chest follow Brittany at all times, whenever they come near each other.

And yet.

The fact is that Santana knows almost nothing about Brittany in the empirical sense, other than that Brittany is the knife thrower's daughter, grew up in the circus, had her mother die when she was young, and likes spending time on the trapeze decks in the afternoon instead of doing chores.

Santana gives a short laugh, suddenly embarrassed at herself.

"I don't know what to make of you," she admits.

And Brittany just laughs, amused at Santana's guilelessness. "Well how about a card reading, then, darlin'?" she says cheerfully.

Santana's stomach drops.

The thought of reading Brittany's cards puts so much dread into Santana that she releases Brittany's hand and flinches away from her.

"No!" she shouts, body tensing. A look of shock passes over Brittany's face, and suddenly Santana hates herself for sounding so sharp. She already shouted at Puck today; she doesn't want to shout at Brittany, as well. "No," she says in a more even voice, though her heart still races, "I can't read your cards, and you have to promise me that you'll never ask me to read them again. Never! Brittany, please?"

Brittany considers Santana for a moment, looking deep into her eyes. Whereas when Santana shouted at Puck, he reacted with hurt and fear, Brittany, for her part, shows only curiosity. She regards Santana carefully, checking for something in Santana's features, and, after a minute, gives a slow nod.

(Circus magic.)

"Why?" she asks simply, quirking her head to one side and waiting for Santana to answer.

Without Brittany saying so, Santana somehow knows that Brittany will accept whatever Santana tells her without question—even if Santana were to lie and Brittany knew it, Brittany would still choose to believe.

A part of Santana wants to lie, of course, both because she fears to make Brittany hate her and because the wounds still ache, fresh in her.

(Her father only died three weeks ago.)

Mostly Santana wants to tell the truth, though, because the deepest part of her yearns for Brittany to know her. Brittany has given Santana so many gifts since yesterday, and the thought of deceiving Brittany even about something important threatens to crack Santana's heart with little fissures up and down its edges. Santana feels a great reaching for Brittany coming from inside her and finds that she would rather die than lie to Brittany at all.

She draws a shaking breath: "Can I tell you a secret?"

Brittany nods. "Anything," she says reverently, and Santana takes her at her word, treasuring it up in her heart. She breathes again, quickly, and then speaks.

"I have a curse," she says. "I have a curse that causes it so that whenever I read the cards, I draw the Death card. Whenever I draw the Death card, the person for whom I read dies, usually within a month or so. I drew the Death card for Mr. Fabray yesterday—"

"I heard about that," Brittany says.

"—and I drew the Death card for my grandmother and my father. My grandmother said that I—that I have a devil. I read for her and she died five weeks later. She suffered very greatly. I read for my father just after that. He died within the week. If I hadn't have— That's why I'm—"

She can't bring herself to say the word.

Her voice fades away. For a long while, the only sounds are those of the forest—birds chirping and grass rustling, wind finding new ways to upset plant leaves, insects slicing the air with their tiny, bladelike wings. Eventually, Santana decides that for as much as she can't bring herself to look at Brittany, she also can't bring herself not to look at her, either. She turns to meet Brittany's gaze and finds Brittany staring at her, a thoughtful sorryness written into Brittany's features.

"Santana," Brittany says. "Santana, look at me. Darlin', it isn't your fault at all! You're not cursed! Hey!"

Before Santana can look away, Brittany takes Santana's face between her hands, holding her steady. Though the warmth of Brittany's palms on Santana's cheeks comforts Santana somewhat, stabilizing her, the depth of Brittany's gaze also frightens Santana in the same way that the vastness of the sky did in Tekamah, like it's too big and too deep and too open all at once.

Like everyone can see everything.

With that thought, Santana nearly pulls away from Brittany, startled by the immensity of the connection between them, but Brittany holds her fast and rubs her thumbs over Santana's temples. She keeps Santana's gaze until Santana slows and stills.

"We all make our own fate," Brittany says seriously, enunciating each word so that Santana can tell she means them. She holds Santana's gaze a second longer, then speaks, "Can I tell you a secret?"

"What?"

The faintest ghost of Brittany's wily grin spreads over her face.

"I don't believe in cards."

It's such a simple thing to say—as simple a thing to say as that a person isn't really married unless she agrees to be married, as simple a thing to say as that people don't search for what they must strain to see unless someone gives them a reason to do so—but somehow it breaks the guilt in Santana, at least for the moment. If Brittany Pierce doesn't believe in cards, then why should Santana Lopez?

For what must be the hundredth time in the day, intense gratitude for Brittany bubbles up from the core of Santana like soap suds in a warm water basin, slowly filling Santana's heart, chest, and lungs until she almost can't handle it.

"I haven't stopped thinking about when you kissed me since this morning," she blurts out.

(She holds her breath, surprised at herself for saying something so forward.)

Brittany scrunches up her nose. "Really?" she asks grinning, her voice honey-sweet. "Oh, darlin'..."

And the next thing Santana knows, she and Brittany kiss again, Brittany guiding her face forward, gently tilting her neck until just the tips of their lips brush.

Santana tastes Brittany flush against her. Her eyelids flutter closed and everything in her rises to meet Brittany, sweet as sunlight and just as warm. At first they kiss softly, then deeply and low, the wets of their lips meeting.

Brittany's tongue flicks over Santana's lips, and Santana finds herself surprised but also not surprised at all. She returns the motion, sinking deeper into Brittany, and they both gasp.

(They think it's because they're surprised.)

After what might be a full minute or five, Brittany pulls away, her eyes a darker blue than they were just a moment before. Her cheeks look pretty pink and burnished gold. Santana smiles at the sight of Brittany, giddy on what just happened between them, and Brittany smiles back. She peels away from Santana, her hands moving from Santana's face to Santana's hands. She gives Santana's palms a light squeeze.

"I have to go," she says suddenly.

Santana startles, afraid that she's done something wrong to make Brittany want to go away so soon after their kiss. "Where?" she asks, searching over Brittany's face for any sign of upset.

(She finds none—just something unreadable and deep.)

"I have to go," Brittany repeats, stepping back. She retreats into the tall grass, watching Santana over her shoulder with wide eyes and parted lips. Santana just stays where she is, stopped short as Brittany hurries away. Her lips still feel the promise of Brittany's kiss.

* * *

><p>No one at the evening fair asks for a card reading, so Santana tells only beautiful lies about palms. She holds hands spread out over peacock hues and predicts mostly happy things with very little danger, feeling somehow sated because hope never hurts anyone—only the aftereffects do.<p>

When the gypsies take to the big top, they do so without speaking to one another, Puck wearing a stony face to mask his fear, Rachel perturbed, and Santana a thousand miles away with fireflies and kisses. She spins her flail more widely than she ever has before and the audience cheers for her, their applause mirroring her bird's wing heartbeat.

After the gypsies leave the stage, Santana watches Mr. Pierce throw his knives from the shadows and sees perfect trust in Brittany's eyes, despite what happened earlier.

Tonight, the knife thrower takes unerring aim, and his daughter waits and Santana for her.

No one ruins the evening circus.

* * *

><p>(Later, after the night show, after supper, after not finding Brittany anywhere on the grounds, Santana falls to sleep, stroking the red ring tied at her finger, dreaming about rays of light and the press of primrose lips.)<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: Thanks for everyone's patience in waiting for the update! This chapter was a big one to write. I so appreciate everyone's readership and reviews. Y'all are the best!<strong>

**Also, as always, a special thank to my flawless beta Han, who saves my little writing life. She is amazing and you should all check out her story i-80, which she has linked at her tumblr, socallmedaisy, because it is fucking amazing!**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**"No me toques! Si pones tus manos sobre mí, lo juro por Dios que el Diablo le llevará! Tengo una maldición! Yo te maldigo! El diablo en mi hombro se arrastra hacia abajo al Infierno! Por Dios, no me toques!" : "Don't touch me! If you put your hands on me, I swear to God the Devil will take you! I have a curse! I curse you! The devil on my shoulder will drag you down to Hell! By God, don't touch me!"**_

_**(Oh benignísimo Ángel.) : (Oh blessed Angel.)**_

_**la Sagrada Familia : the Holy Family**_

_**"¡Aléjate de mí!" : "Get away from me!"**_


	5. Malagüera

**Chapter 4: Malagüera**

**Tuesday, June 28th, 1898: St. James, Minnesota**

When he nudges her awake the next day, Puck doesn't call Santana ladybird and he doesn't ask her how she slept. Instead, he just orders Santana to meet him outside the tent after she dresses, his voice tight as a pulled bowstring. As he exits the tent, he moves like a disciplined dog that still wants its dinner, watching Santana in his peripheral vision with dark hound eyes but a blank face otherwise.

At Puck's word, Santana groans and peels herself from the cot, aching all over from yesterday's activities. She quickly discovers that where she once had blisters on her heels, she now sports raw, open sores. She winces, touching the wounds, feeling the pink in them and poking at her broken skin, and thinks of Brittany, who goes shoeless everywhere except for when she performs. Santana has never walked barefoot out-of-doors before in her life, but she supposes that today might be a fine day to start at it.

After dressing and grooming herself, Santana tucks her shoes into her valise and joins Puck under the dark pall of morning. Wet grass clings to her toes and itches at the soles of her feet. It packs her wounded heels, stinging at first, but then becoming a cool kind of poultice.

If Puck notices that Santana goes barefoot, he says nothing about it. Instead, he takes down the tent and then sets his hat on his head.

"Come on," he says quietly, refusing to look at her.

(Santana had never thought that she would miss being Puck's ladybird.)

* * *

><p>Puck and Santana don't speak at breakfast, though somehow the quiet between them carries a sound all its own, ringing with disappointment and a too-much-too-soon-too-close annoyance. Puck keeps his head down and shovels away hotcakes, swallowing his usual grunts of pleasure and casting a hard scowl at his plate to keep from looking at Santana.<p>

He isn't the only one who seems to begrudge Santana her presence, either; the rest of the company glares at her, disdaining, as well. They remember her fight with Puck perhaps better than Santana herself does, glaring at her like she insulted them along with their favorite son and brother.

Santana finds the great, invisible door that separates her from the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus suddenly shut tighter than ever. Now she stands outside, uninvited into the parlor of their trust, wondering if she'll ever make it to their party, even if she waits for a thousand years and more.

Like yesterday and the day before, Santana finds Brittany nowhere in the crowd; she secretly begins to wonder if there exists some other mess pit where all the kind people of the circus company take their meals together.

(Sam and Brittany would be the only souls there—except for maybe Sam's father, who prays nice things for everyone.)

After breakfast, the circus makes its silent journey through the streets of Mankato, taking back avenues instead of the main road, the loudly-colorful wagons and usually boisterous performers quiet as they pass by shops and houses, with even the elephants voiceless in the dark. The closer the circus draws to the depot and the river, the wetter and colder the air turns around them, until Santana finds herself shivering, shoeless and cold as she clings to the side of a horse landau with Puck.

As the circus waits to board the train from the platform, Santana looks out upon the low fog hazy over the river, watching as egrets take long-winged flight from the marsh rushes along the banks, suddenly circus lonely again and wondering to where Brittany might have gone since last Santana saw her.

If they were speaking to one another, Santana might ask Puck to tell her where to find the knife thrower and his daughter on the train. As it is, Santana simply remembers Brittany's kisses and thinks to herself that she would very much like to spend her mornings with Brittany instead of with Puck, on the whole.

(She always forgets the dream secrets she wants to tell Brittany when first she wakes.)

Puck chooses another mostly empty car today, this one sparsely populated with clowns and acrobats but not supes—a fact for which Santana feels immensely grateful.

"Forty miles to St. James," Puck grunts before tucking himself into a corner, producing his wooden eagle's head and knife from his rucksack so that he can whittle during the journey, ignoring Santana as she takes a seat a yard or so away from him down the wall.

The trilby tramp, his clown tentmate, and the sweet-faced juggler boy from the fair form a small circle around Puck, their backs blocking Santana out of their conversation with him.

The train rolls to a start and Santana settles lower where she sits, observing the still black void of the river from out the open car doors, her skin tight with a chill, her body still mostly asleep. She overhears the other boys call the trilby tramp Blaine and catalogues him in her memory, adding him to the dozen or so other people she knows by name within the company.

No one in the boxcar will even look at Santana.

(For the life of her, Santana cannot decide what she most dislikes: having people hate her for what they see on her or having people hate her without seeing her at all.)

* * *

><p>The train ride lasts less than an hour. When the circus pulls into the station at St. James, the sun has yet to rise. The sky remains an even purple, a child with freckle stars on its cheeks and a waxing gibbous moon smirk set between the constellations. Santana's bare feet feel cool to the touch but strangely numb, wind-pinked from the draft that rattled through the open boxcar door as the train followed its tracks coming from Mankato. Santana walks gingerly onto the platform and shudders, lonely for the sun and other golden things.<p>

Considering that it is not yet six o'clock in the morning, the circus does not make its usual parade into town. Instead, they move quietly, everyone piling into the closest available wagon and lying low, with no music or somersaults to announce their arrival at St. James.

Even Rachel Berry doesn't speak a word.

St. James itself is a much smaller town than Mankato, with a placid main street and no buildings taller than one story high. The railway runs adjacent to the wide dirt road cutting through the center of town, which itself takes a direct path to a plot of green land bordering a low lake not dissimilar to the one that Santana saw in Worthington.

The circus company arrives at camp to find the white city less built up than it normally would be, with most of the tents still in listless heaps of canvas upon the ground, as hopeless and flat as deflated balloons. The incompleteness of the camp throws Santana, who doesn't know quite how to navigate the place without the tent rows in their usual arrangement—and especially not with Puck still refusing to speak to her.

As soon as their cart rattles to a stop on the grass, Puck debarks, landing heavily upon the earth. He doesn't offer to help Santana down or even acknowledge her. Though Santana and Puck have quarreled in the past, Puck has never managed to fully ignore Santana for such a long time as this before. Something about the way he moves now—like their fight yesterday left stains on his shirt, and he doesn't want Santana to see them—frightens her.

"Puck!" she calls, overcautious about her skirts as she stutters off her mudguard perch. "Puck!"

He doesn't slow his pace and he certainly doesn't stop.

Just then, a voice rings out from somewhere behind Santana, covering her shouts.

"Puckermans!"

It seems that Ma Jones has managed to sneak up on Santana earlier than usual today.

Both Santana and Puck start, changing their direction to find not only Ma Jones but also Mrs. Schuester approaching them from the peripheries of the camp, Ma Jones fresh from a horse cart, Mrs. Schuester from some vehicle further down the line and walking a stride aback from Ma. The two women march briskly across the turf, their skirts hiked up around their ankles, and seem so determined to reach their destination that they almost appear to race each other.

The sight of them would strike Santana as comical, if they didn't terrify her so.

"Puck," Ma says in a sharp voice as soon as she comes to within a reasonable distance of him, "you take Santana's bag so she can come along with us."

"Come along with you to where?" Santana asks, confused and anxious.

When Ma Jones flashes her a sharp look, Santana shrinks down as would a kitchen mouse against floorboards at the sound of approaching footsteps. For some reason, the idea of Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester singling her out from everyone else in camp at this hour of the day makes Santana immensely nervous. She wishes she could hide, but she has nowhere to go.

Puck relieves Santana of her valise, and she stares at him, wide-eyed. She wishes that Puck might perhaps clarify what Ma wants or somehow save her from going with Ma and Mrs. Schuester at all.

No such luck.

Puck doesn't seem to mind Ma and Mrs. Schuester taking Santana away from him today. He simply nods at the women, rearranging his rucksack and Santana's valise in his arms. Puck's resignation to her fate somehow makes Santana feel worse about it herself.

(Will she ever go a day at the circus without having a scare before lunch?)

"To town," Ma answers Santana bluntly. "The good Lord knows you ain't gonna be nothing but in the way if you stay around camp, and all my girls—"

"—and all my girls—," Mrs. Schuester adds.

"—have enough work to do that we can't afford to take them with us before lunch. We figure that since your yeller behind don't have nothing better to do, you can at least make yourself a stitch useful and come with us to town."

"To do what?" Santana asks.

The question sounds sharper than she means it to.

Ma seems annoyed at Santana's tone. She also seems annoyed at Santana's ignorance, as if Santana has asked her something foolish. She rolls her eyes.

"To do some shopping," Ma says. She puts a false sweetness into her voice, "We need to pick up some groceries for later today, and we thought that perhaps you might come along, if it ain't inconvenient to you."

(It feels like Ma Jones accusing Santana of something, but Santana doesn't know quite what.)

In the next minute, Santana finds herself clambering onto the back of one of the circus wagons after Mrs. Schuester, with Ma Jones taking a seat on the bench at the fore of the wagon beside the driver—a large, surly supe with a pencil-thin moustache, dark skin, and belly wider than Puck's shoulders. The man wears bib overalls and a floppy hat and chews a plug of tobacco in the ample pouch of his cheek.

As Santana settles into the wagon bed beside Mrs. Schuester, she discovers three large wicker baskets stacked and waiting for them to take into town.

Until this moment, Santana had never wondered about circus rations, but suddenly she finds herself quite curious as to how often Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester undertake shopping trips such as this one. She also wonders about what kinds and how much food they'll buy today.

Santana supposes that Mr. Adams must allot the women an allowance to purchase as many groceries as they need or else run a tab with certain stores along the circus route. She tries to imagine herself, Ma Jones, and Mrs. Schuester procuring enough food to feed over five-hundred people with just their little baskets, but can't.

(It would take a miracle backwards from the one in the Gospels.)

As the ladies situate themselves on the wagon, Puck rustles, leaving the scene without as much as a goodbye to Santana or any mention of seeing her again later in the day. Santana can't help but notice how Puck shrugs his shoulders as he walks away from her, as if putting off a heavy, invisible coat. Something in the motion seems much more sad than angry.

(Yesterday's fight bothers Puck for a very different reason than it does Santana.)

(It sank into his blood, but hardly scratched her surface.)

"Hop to it!" Ma barks and the supe at her side immediately obeys, whistling at his mules to start out of camp at a trot.

Leaving the circus grounds so soon after arriving at them seems very strange to Santana and she can't help but worry about what will happen if Brittany comes looking for her once she's gone to town.

Santana hasn't talked to Brittany since yesterday afternoon before the evening show, when Brittany took Santana's face in her hands and kissed Santana so well that she remembers the feather flush of it on her lips even now, hours later. Santana still doesn't quite understand why Brittany decided to become her friend, but she likes thinking of the word and thinking of Brittany so much that a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth before she can help it.

"What?" Mrs. Schuester says, scowling at Santana from across the wagon bed.

"Nothing," Santana quickly replies.

(It isn't nothing at all.)

* * *

><p>St. James appears to have partially awakened after the circus passed through its streets, with the businessmen of the town already about their errands, though the other citizens still sleep. Whereas before the sidewalks stood mostly empty, now Santana finds shopkeepers stirring on their stoops and couriers scampering here and there, taking parcels from one side of town to the other.<p>

The wagon bumps to a halt just outside the general store, a tidy white building with a wooden porch at its front. A boy wearing an apron stands outside, sweeping the porch with a broom. Several posters for the circus hang on the wooden columns upholding the store's awning, announcing clowns, elephants, and the famous Little Malibran of Seville to the town. The posters take Santana aback.

(Somehow, it seems strange to see the circus summarized down to a microcosm.)

(The posters fail to mention the most important parts of the circus at all.)

The supe helps Ma Jones off the bench, holding her hand, and then comes around to the back of the wagon to unhitch the flap, releasing Mrs. Schuester and Santana to the street.

He distributes the three baskets from the back of the wagon to Mrs. Schuester, Santana, and Ma, in turn, but he doesn't accompany the women as they move toward the store.

Instead, he resumes his perch at the wagon, wearing a thoughtful expression as he watches Ma Jones go, like she puzzles him in a good way and he enjoys reckoning her out.

"G'morning," the shop boy on the porch nods as the women enter the store together, Santana trailing at Ma and Mrs. Schuester's heels.

The store smells of herbs and must, with root vegetables hanging down from the rafters and great barrels brimming with dried beans and milled flours open along the three main aisles. All manner of comestibles, farm implements, tools, toys, and house wares occupy the available space. The merchandise ranges from jars filled with pretty yellow and red candies to reams of striped, chintz, and solid colored fabrics and crates replete with fresh farm eggs. Amidst the other goods, Santana even spies a tall, thin bicycle propped against the wall farthest from the door and a little heap of corncob dolls sleeping in a painted cradle tucked modestly behind a bucket of chickpeas.

Despite all the other exciting curios to see, Santana's eyes immediately find a small shelf with a half-dozen books crammed onto it, hanging near the front of the room. Though the books are dime novels and penny dreadfuls of the type Santana's father and grandmother would have never allowed her to read at the bachelor cottage, Santana can't help but want to peruse them.

(In a way, she feels more homesick for stories than she does for New York.)

Just as Santana starts to move toward the shelf, Mrs. Schuester snaps at her to pay attention and not to dawdle, drawing her away.

"Don't touch anything," Mrs. Schuester commands in her poison-honey voice, as if Santana were a child with roaming fingers, liable to break everything in sight.

At that exact moment, something shifts in the air, invisible but perceptible, and suddenly it feels as if Santana has passed into an entirely new country that is the opposite of the circus.

Mrs. Schuester steps out in front of Ma Jones and Santana, swelling with pride and import just from the act of passing them. In camp, Mrs. Schuester usually cowers before Ma Jones, but here she walks with her head held high, smug as the cat whose privilege is to live indoors while the dog stays out in the rain. She tilts her chin just slightly up and offers the man behind the shop counter a thin smile that somehow causes her to look more dangerous than happy. For a second, Santana can imagine Mrs. Schuester dressed in a fine cape of jewels, like Mr. Gautier's Clarimonde in her magic palace.

By contrast, Ma Jones appears windless in an instant, like ship sails on a becalmed sea, and somehow smaller than before, as if the very act of entering the store has stolen something vital from her.

(Maybe it has.)

For the first time since meeting Ma's acquaintance, Santana remembers that she and Ma are of about the same age. Ma doesn't meet the eyes of the shopkeeper, only nods to him in deference.

Santana would perhaps fail to understand the source of this change, except that, simultaneous to it happening, she finds herself standing before a great polished mirror, tall enough to capture her whole reflection from toe to crown. Seeing her own image, Santana gasps and nearly drops her basket.

Three days at the circus have made Santana a stranger to herself.

The girl in the mirror is a gypsy. She has russet skin, tinged darkest along her jaw line, at the curves of her neck, across the bridge of her nose and rounded cheeks, and over her bare collarbones and knuckles, earth-toned like clay, with faint sunburn red brazed into her shoulders.

She looks wild, with wind run permanently through her hair and her lips cracked in little weatherworn fissures. Her skirts and blouse seem like something out of a Delacroix painting, dramatic and vivid, showing shocks of flesh in relief to her body's curves and angles. Deep brown and purple bruises dot her shins and abrasions curl, pink, over the heels of her hands.

The gypsy girl walks barefoot in a public store and looks nothing like the prim, laced child who grew up in the bachelor cottage in Gramercy Park.

Santana only recognizes herself in the gypsy girl because when she reaches toward the mirror, the gypsy girl reaches back, looking as horrified at Santana as Santana feels at her.

Before Santana can help it, the thought occurs to her that she has grown nearly as dark as Ma Jones under the sun. Immediately, she hates herself for noticing it.

(She also hates herself for being it.)

(She feels sad somehow, like she's betrayed herself and everyone simply by finding herself something other than what they would prefer.)

A deep, niggling shame that comes from outside Santana nestles deep inside of her. Suddenly, she knows why Ma Jones has gone quiet and Mrs. Schuester taken the lead. Rules are rules are rules, and Santana can practically see them written all over her own face.

"Santana!" Mrs. Schuester hisses. "I told you not to dawdle!"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am," Santana swallows a lump. She takes another long look at herself, wondering if the girl before her is the same one Brittany saw when she first laid eyes on Santana. Something trembles deep in the quick of Santana's dark, dark eyes.

Mrs. Schuester smiles her dangerous smile. "Good girl," she says.

It doesn't sound like praise at all.

* * *

><p>It turns out that fitting food into baskets actually plays very little role in shopping for the circus.<p>

Mrs. Schuester corners the shopkeeper—an old man with a white mutton-chop moustache—and rattles off a litany of items that she would like to order to him, including one hundred pounds of flour and two hundred pounds of dried kidney beans. The shopkeeper promises to have his shop boy take the lot of it out to the wagon.

In the meanwhile, Ma Jones leads Santana around the store, stocking up on smaller goods, like little jars of celery salt and crushed fennel, twenty heavy carrots spread between their two baskets, a new paring knife, and a bushel of apples in a burlap bag which Ma orders Santana to carry on her hip a la a lumpy, oversized infant, even as Santana keeps track of her basket as well.

The whole time Ma and Santana gather their purchases, Ma seems distracted; she continually checks over to the counter to see that Mrs. Schuester makes the order correctly. Santana gets the impression that Ma supposes that she could better communicate with the shopkeeper than Mrs. Schuester can and that not having control over something to do with her own kitchen causes Ma some anxiety.

And judging by the way that Mrs. Schuester places the order so flippantly, allowing the shopkeeper to sway her on measures and quantities, hemming over this, waving away that, Santana can't help but see why Ma feels the way she does.

After Ma gathers up all the small items she wants from the store, she takes Santana with her to the counter, joining Mrs. Schuester, who produces a purse of money from under her apron and hands the shopkeeper more legal tender than Santana has ever seen all in one sum before in her life.

For his part, the shopkeeper largely ignores Ma and Santana but calls Mrs. Schuester "ma'am" and humors her little criticisms at how long it takes him to tabulate her total with an unfailing patience that causes Santana to admire him, even though he is a stranger to her. At some point, the shopkeeper directs Santana to pass him the bag of apples, which he weighs on a scale and adds to his ledger.

The whole adventure of shopping takes a rather long while; before it ends, Santana feels as if she has been away from the circus for days, rather than just a few hours.

Once Mrs. Schuester finishes up the transaction with the shopkeeper, she leads Ma Jones and Santana outside, where they find the same shop boy who had swept the porch earlier in the day lugging great bags of flour, beans, and other goods around from the back of the store to the bed of the wagon with help from the circus supe. Though the boy seems considerably younger than Santana, he can carry an impressive amount of weight, slinging the bags over his shoulders and tucking them under his arms, hefting almost as much as the much larger, much older supe himself does.

The streets of St. James seem much more crowded than they did when Santana followed Ma and Mrs. Schuester into the store. Now, in addition to businessmen and page boys, women and children dart here and there, some out for strolls, others on errands. Since it is summer, the children haven't any school to occupy them; some give themselves over to delinquency, others just to boredom. Bodies both human and animal mill in front of every building and along the sidewalks.

Waiting at the side of the wagon for the supe and the boy to finish their work makes Santana inexplicably nervous. Though she knows she likely only imagines it, it seems to Santana as if every passerby watches her and Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester with disdain—as if the people of St. James can see the circus on the women and somehow distrust them for it.

Santana feels like a fool in her costume, as well as impossibly conscious of her own barefootedness in public. She wishes that she had thought to take her shoes out of her valise before surrendering it over to Puck back at the camp. Her grandmother would balk if she knew that Santana had made her first visit to a store not even wearing socks.

When the supe and the shop boy finally arrange the last of their goods in the wagon bed, they do so not a moment too soon for Santana's comfort.

With so many bags of beans, flour, and other goods overrunning the space, Santana and Mrs. Schuester scuttle against the wagon bed, finding it difficult to situate themselves amidst the merchandise.

Eventually, Santana sits on a barrel labeled DRIED APPLES and arranges her skirts over her legs to at least keep some semblance of modesty; at the same time, Mrs. Schuester sets herself down beside a flank of cured bacon, looking thoroughly disgusted by her proximity to uncovered meat.

As she did on the ride into town, Ma Jones takes to the bench beside the supe.

Now that the population of St. James has fully awakened for the day, the ride out of town goes much slower than the ride into town did before, with the supe halting his mules every few feet to allow both pedestrian and beast-drawn traffic to pass in front of the wagon. Santana looks at her lap to keep from meeting the eyes of the townspeople riding on either side of her in carts and on horseback. She wonders what Ma and Mrs. Schuester will have her do once they return to camp and contemplates slipping away to find Brittany.

"Hey-o, gypsy girl!"

A voice interrupts Santana's thoughts and she turns to see a handful of boys, two of them on horseback, the others on foot, flanking the wagon, pointing and jeering at her; the boys appear no older than fifteen years of age or so. Most of them have baby faces but look at Santana with an adult and uncivilized interest. Her stomach turns over.

"Hey-o, gyp!"

Santana tenses where she sits, not knowing what the boys intend to do as they follow along at the side of the wagon, casting sideways glances at her from under the shadows of their hat brims, smirking devilishly, though in a much less familiar way than Puck. She feels as if she's done something wrong to attract the boys' attention, even though she knows she hasn't.

"Santana!" Mrs. Schuester snips, reaching across the wagon bed and yanking on the hem of Santana's skirts so sharply that she actually pulls Santana off her barrel and onto a bag of dried kidney beans. Santana lands with an _oof_ and stares at Mrs. Schuester, wide-eyed. Mrs. Schuester gives her a hard look, warning Santana to not make eye contact with the boys anymore—as if Santana would ever encourage the boys to catcall her of her own volition.

"Santana! Santana!" the boys parrot, picking up her name and tossing it around like a loose ball on a playground. "Gypsy Santana!"

Santana crouches lower in the wagon bed. Not for the first time since her stay at the Tenderloin district, she wishes she could be invisible. The boys chorus her name all through the town, until she almost feels sick with it. She daren't look up until eventually she realizes that the boys have ceased to follow the wagon anymore.

Confused, she chances a peek outside the wagon, only to see that it has recently traversed the border of St. James proper and that the boys refuse do the same. Instead, they linger behind the wagon, watching it briefly before turning away, suddenly bored with Santana's lack of response to their taunts and unwilling to leave St. James to follow her all the way to the circus.

The wagon heads toward the distant plot of green where the white city lays, putting more and more distance between the bustle of the town and its back wheels.

(If Santana didn't know better, she would say she was going home.)

* * *

><p>Santana and the others arrive back at camp to find the place in chaos, and not just of the usual, strangely organized circus sort.<p>

A large portion of the company gathers on the open end of the midway, forming a crude semicircle around some sort of hullabaloo that Santana can not yet see.

As the wagon creaks to a halt in the grass, Ma Jones, Mrs. Schuester, and the supe—whom Santana has heard Ma Jones call Shane during the drive from town—all stand at attention, looking like sentries who've spotted a threat. Shane hurriedly helps Ma Jones from her bench and then unlatches the wagon bed, freeing Mrs. Schuester and Santana. Quietly and with wide eyes, the three women and Shane hurry to join the throng, eager to find the source of the commotion, leaving their newly purchased goods behind in the wagon for the time being.

Santana sticks close to Ma Jones, for whom the company parts to make way, and, in so doing, manages to find a place near the front of the crowd, hanging at Ma's elbow. She sees the cause of the ruckus at the same time as a couple of Ma Jones' kitchen girls lean over to Ma to explain the situation to her.

"A spotted ass got loose from its wagon, and now all the fellas be trying to catch it!"

"Everybody says Finn Hudson was the one who let it free from the wagon!"

Sure enough, Santana sees a group of men forming a ring around one of the spotted asses, which bucks and brays, its deep black eyes wild and motions frenzied. Finn Hudson mopes off to the sidelines, shuffling his boatlike feet and wearing a penitent version of his usual stunned expression. Outside of Finn, most of the men in the group hold rope nets strung between their hands, as if the spotted ass is a fish they intend to catch out of the sea for supper.

Something about the whole operation seems silly; the nets look too small to do any real good given the size of the animal, and the men appear too flustered on the whole to achieve their goal, even if the ass should draw close to them. If Santana didn't know better, she would suppose she had stumbled upon a cadre of clowns practicing some new comedy routine for today's show.

Looking past the men, Santana sees the ass, which, for its part, seems not dissimilar to a zebra, except for its coloration. Whereas a zebra has black and brown stripes charred up and down its flanks and legs, the spotted ass has a white underbelly, with blotches of dun stained over its back and thighs, and faint gray pinstripes lining its hocks and fetlocks.

Like the zebra, the ass boasts a raucous upright mane that resembles the bristles on a broom and a thin, dopey tail. Its body appears squatter than that of a horse. It moves like a kitten pouncing on a mouse, springing into the air, back legs leaving the earth first, front legs following, kicking up dust and grass as it goes.

The men surrounding the animal seem afraid to get too close to it, though Santana doesn't especially blame them for their trepidation; the ass could kick them at any second, and Santana can well imagine that its short, blunt hooves might potentially gouge out the eyeball of any unlucky fellow who approaches it from the wrong angle.

Amongst several supes in the capture party, Santana also spies both Sam and Mr. Evans, in addition to Jesse St. James the lion tamer, the last of whom carries a rope lasso instead of a net. Though Santana doesn't know the other men enough to care about them much, the idea of Sam in harm's way causes her some distress; her heartbeat picks up at the sight of him. Aside from Brittany, Sam has been the only member of the company to show Santana any kindness since she joined the circus. She doesn't want him to get hurt.

As if Santana thinking about him had somehow spurred him to move, Sam suddenly makes a lunge for the ass, darting into the center of the ring with his arms outstretched, net extended between his hands.

Santana only mostly swallows a shriek as Sam and the animal come to within one yard of each other. At once, Santana's hands leap to cover her mouth, and she blanches, watching the boy and the beast butterfly step until they halt at the center of the ring, stopping just before they actually collide. After a split instant of indecision, Sam's courage wanes, and he retreats to the peripheries of the ring just as quickly as he entered it, falling back into rank with the other men like a child rejoining his teammates after a failed attempt at Red Rover.

Mr. Evans offers his son a stout pat on the back while the ass continues to kick and snuff, growing increasingly agitated as it realizes that the men have it trapped on every side.

"Go that way!" shouts one of the supes, gesturing to his left.

The other men stare at him, unwilling to move, lest they upset the ass any further.

"Oh, Christ's sake!" says a familiar voice.

Santana looks to see Will the Ringmaster emerging from the crowd, both half-shaven and half-dressed, wearing only his shirt, boots, and riding breeches, his vest and coat nowhere in sight. A washcloth sits on his shoulder, and Santana spots a little daub of shaving cream smudged over the dimple in his chin. Will walks with thunder in his steps and a scowl on his face, terribly annoyed, looking not half as bright as he does during the circus performances.

"Jesus! Step off!" Will blusters, shoving through the throng until he reaches the ring of men. He mutters some very coarse words under his breath, though loudly enough for Santana to hear them. A few of the women around Santana gasp.

Whereas some of the other men hang back, Will shows no fear of the ass and steps boldly toward it, Sam and Mr. Evans flanking him, as well as Jesse St. James. The supes back off, apparently less invested in catching the ass than the men on the lists.

Finn Hudson looks startled like a little boy whose father has just come home to find him doing something naughty. Finn cowers at the edge of one of the midway booths, watching as Will positions himself in front of the ass, hitching up his sleeves in preparation to make the catch.

Will directs Mr. Evans, Sam, and Jesse to fan out around the bucking animal, and then, in the next instant, the crowd recoils as Will makes a dive for the ass barehanded, throwing his arms around its neck and wrestling it to submission in one rugged, grappling motion.

The animal struggles against Will, but he wrenches its neck until its front feet fall out from under it and the ass stumbles forward onto its knees. The ass lets out a choking bleat, and Santana feels faintly sick watching how savagely Will treats it. As Will cusses and flattens his body over the animal, strong and crude as a cowboy, Jesse St. James fits his lasso over the ass's neck, looking smug at his part in its capture, though he scarcely helped anything at all.

With the ass secured in the lasso, Will staggers to his feet, brushing dust from his breeches and shaking his head, disgusted that he had to intervene, though it clearly isn't his job to do so.

"Will!" Mrs. Schuester shrieks, bustling out of the crowd toward her husband and throwing her arms around his shoulders, though he tries to shake her off.

She somehow seems more concerned about his welfare now that the danger has passed than she did in the moment when he subdued a wild animal using nothing but his own body to do it. She hangs on him and smoothes at his hair, though he shoos her away as one would do to a swarm of pesky gnats, telling her that he's fine and that she oughtn't to fuss.

The Schuesters disappear from the midway together, crossing under the billboards back to the residential side of camp, Mrs. Schuester's arms draped over Will's shoulders like a shawl, Will cursing God and everything as Mrs. Schuester refuses to just shut up.

Jesse St. James hands his lasso over to a supe, smirking as though he's just done something impressive. To his credit, the supe chooses to ignore Jesse's haughtiness, instead taking the ass into his custody with nary a word before he leads it back toward the pens on the far side of the big top. At the same time, Mr. Evans steps in front of Finn Hudson.

"Mr. Adams will hear of this," Mr. Evans says sternly. He sounds matter-of-fact, rather than threatening. All the same, Santana knows that if she were Finn, she would fear to have Mr. Evans say such a thing to her face—and particularly since Mr. Evans' collected stringency quite reminds Santana of her own father when he used to scold her for misbehavior using his deep black coffee voice and looking so thoroughly disappointed.

Finn slumps down as if his own weight has suddenly become too much for his own frame to bear. "Yes, sir," he says, looking at his toes.

(Santana can sympathize with anyone who ruins or nearly ruins the circus.)

* * *

><p>With the ass captured and the chaos quieted, the crowd begins to disperse, heading back to their jobs and their tents until Santana finds herself standing mostly in the clear. She searches for Brittany amongst the departing heads and shoulders, but doesn't see her.<p>

It puzzles Santana that Brittany would miss something as exciting as a wild animal running loose down the midway before lunchtime, but, then again, Santana doesn't presume to know what happenings Brittany might find exciting enough to warrant her presence. Santana does wonder where Brittany spends her mornings and afternoons, though.

Neither the knife thrower nor his daughter are anywhere in sight.

Since Santana hasn't had a friend until now, she finds herself amazed at how much Brittany interests her. Santana has never felt so thoroughly taken with anyone upon a first meeting as she has with Brittany.

In fact, Santana's grandmother used to tease Santana for being so shy and slow to warm to new company.

(When Puck started working at the bachelor cottage, Santana wouldn't meet his eyes for weeks.)

Not so with Brittany.

Whenever Santana thinks of Brittany, she feels a sweet happiness that flips her belly like a coin tossed for luck. She wants to tell Brittany everything and give Brittany everything and listen to anything that Brittany wants to say.

Since yesterday, a certain idea has begun to take hold of Santana's mind—one that she can't help but entertain whenever she remembers Brittany's perfect talent for making her smile and how precious Brittany looks crinkling up her nose or whenever Santana considers what will happen when next she and Brittany meet.

(Which is something she considers often.)

Santana Lopez wants to kiss Brittany Pierce.

By Santana's estimation, Brittany has kissed her two and a half times now: once on the cheek after they waded through the fireflies, once in the big top under the streams of light, and once on the edge of the wood in Mankato after Santana cried and Brittany made her feel better.

But while Brittany has kissed Santana rather a lot since they became friends, Santana has never kissed Brittany in return, and that hardly seems fair.

(Friendship should be about reciprocity and generosity, shouldn't it?)

Of course, Santana doesn't know the rules for when a friend may kiss her friend or if Brittany would even allow Santana to initiate a kiss between them, but that doesn't stop Santana from wanting to kiss Brittany more than she wants just about anything else in the world, including to perform well in today's circuses.

Santana tries to discern a pattern in when Brittany chooses to kiss her but finds none except that Brittany always seems to do it at just the right moment.

Honestly, Santana hadn't known that friends kissed each other so very often before she met Brittany, but she blames her surprise on her own ignorance for never having spent time outside the bachelor cottage before now.

Santana would ask Brittany the rules for kissing except that, for one thing, she would feel bashful posing Brittany such a childish question on a matter that a grown person already ought to understand plainly, and, for another thing, Brittany doesn't seem to esteem the rules very highly on the whole.

In some ways, Santana can remember the kisses Brittany has given her almost perfectly, but, in other ways, she feels as if she has already forgotten too much about them. She yearns to experience them again, to memorize their press and the perfect thrill of them on her lips. She feels awfully curious to know the difference between kissing and having someone kiss her and somehow suspects that finding the answer to her query will be the most important thing she does all day or all week.

(Always.)

(Kissing Brittany seems like the best thing Santana could do to tell and give Brittany everything and to listen to Brittany's anything at all.)

* * *

><p>Ma Jones enlists Santana to help prepare lunch, saddling Santana with two dozen carrots to peel, in addition to a stern lecture about how she will have no tomfoolery in her kitchen or she'll <em>whup Santana's yeller behind until Santana can't sit straight for the pain of it<em>. She then hands Santana a dull paring knife—not the new one they bought at the store earlier in the day—before sending Santana to sit at the far edge of the mess pit, well enough away from Ma's kitchen girls so as to prevent Santana from causing trouble with them.

Santana doesn't mind the seclusion, as it affords her time alone to think.

By now, the sun shines brightly enough overhead that the earth reflects its heat, and the scent of baked dirt and green warmed over waft into the air. The day feels hot and fat with humidity—the typical state of Midwestern summer—and the white tents in the distance almost shine, luminescent.

Because the circus arrived to town earlier than they normally would, Ma Jones wants to have lunch early, too, and she admonishes Santana and the kitchen girls to work hard and fast to accommodate her desired change in schedule.

Santana tries to oblige her, peeling carrot after carrot, vegetable wet slicking her palms and stinging at the scrapes on her wrists, leftover from yesterday's fall. Santana winces and squints against the light, wondering if she ought to perhaps ask Puck for a bandage for her wounds, only to remember that he won't speak to her. She considers apologizing to Puck when next she sees him, but she can't imagine what she might say to him to do it.

Theirs is not a relationship that fits in _sorry_ or _thank you_ or any real politeness.

They've made a agreement with each other, and though Santana does feel grateful to Puck for his help, she can't find it in herself to bite her tongue for him, even if he would have her do so.

As she thinks about her and Puck's lie, Santana suddenly remembers the thread ring that Brittany gave her yesterday in the tent and looks down to find it still tied snugly around her finger, as if to remind her of some important future thing. Seeing the pretty red bow causes heat to rush to Santana's cheeks. She smiles again like she did in the wagon this morning, feeling so sweet on Brittany that she almost can't stand it.

* * *

><p>Brittany doesn't make an appearance.<p>

Though Santana waits in the mess pit perched atop a bench like a sentry on a tower until the bell rings, Brittany never arrives to take her meal with the rest of the company.

Puck strolls in amidst a gaggle of fellows, including Finn, Blaine, and Blaine's tentmate, plus some other supes. He takes one look at Santana before stalking over to the other side of the mess pit to eat his meal as far away from her as possible.

Next, Sam shows up with his father and younger brother and tips his hat to Ma Jones before he takes his plate.

Eventually, Rachel Berry trots onto the scene with the quadroon manservant at her elbow. The quadroon manservant smiles at her dotingly, eliciting smiles from her in turn.

The Flying Dragon Changs, the Bearded Lady, Ken, and the Famed Giantess of Akron all come around, as well, but not Brittany or her father.

(Santana begins to wonder if the Pierces ever eat at all.)

After wolfing down her lunch—scalloped potatoes and carrots in gravy, with leftover biscuits from breakfast for sop—Santana slips out of the mess pit before anyone can nab her to do more work, eager to find Brittany, if only just to say hello before the morning fair.

Escaping from her chores fills Santana both with fear and exhilaration. Yesterday, Santana at least had Brittany with her when she shirked off her morning duties. Today, she goes along by her lonesome. Though Santana hates the prospect of punishment, she takes some pride in her own bravery—and particularly as she ventures into a new area of camp that she has never yet visited.

The way Santana sees it, the knife thrower's tent must not neighbor her own tent very nearly, or otherwise she would have encountered Brittany more often in passing at night and in the mornings than she has so far.

After spending three days at the circus, Santana has seen enough of the white city to deduce that Brittany probably lives somewhere on the far north side of the residential camp, or at least somewhere out of the way of both Santana's own tent and the mess pit, where she would be easy to spot.

With these deductions in mind—Santana feels as sneaky and as clever as le Chevalier Dupin making his rounds on an investigation—Santana slinks to the northeasternmost corner of the residential camp, just beyond the trisection of tents where she first met Brittany. She goes carefully, making sure to avoid any latecomers to the mess pit as she passes around the chuck wagon and backs into the shadowy alley where she suspects that she might find Mr. Pierce's and Brittany's tent.

Almost immediately, she discovers that this section of the camp scarcely resembles the one where she lives, with the tents here twice and even three times the size of the regular eight by four wall frames in which most of the company seems to reside.

Four of these large tents line the way, with one to the left side of the alley and three to the right. These structures somehow appear sturdier than the wall tents to the south of the white city, with wider poles and thicker canvas for their support and with no sod cloth anywhere upon them.

It occurs to Santana that these tents do not house couples or bunkmates but rather families, and the thought stabs fresh pains through Santana's chest: one for Brittany, whose family once included a mother but doesn't anymore; and one for herself, who has no more family anymore at all; and one for something that she wants but can't name.

(It seems far away but also inexplicably close.)

If the Pierces live anywhere in camp, it must be here.

The questions are which tent would be theirs, and, beyond that, if Brittany is even inside her own tent at this hour. Briefly, Santana considers calling Brittany's name, but then she wonders about Brittany's father's whereabouts and uneasiness silences her.

Though Santana has never yet spoken to Mr. Pierce, the surliness she observed in him during the knife throwing act unnerves her. He seems like a very sullen man and someone who might take offense to Santana simply at the sight of her. Santana doesn't want her only friend's father to hate her if she can help it—and the best way to help it, Santana supposes, is for her to simply avoid Mr. Pierce for as long as she can.

"Santana?"

For a split second, Santana hopes that Brittany has found her, but then she looks over her shoulder to see Rachel Berry staring at her like she's the only knife in a spoon drawer, wearing expression utterly quizzical. Santana and Rachel's eyes meet, and Santana instantly flushes, as guilty as if Rachel has caught her doing something wicked instead of just loitering about. How many rules has Santana broken by coming here unaccompanied? She hates to think about it and diverts her gaze, ashamed.

"What are you doing?" Rachel asks.

"Nothing," Santana blurts, her voice coming out sharper than she means it to.

Rachel flinches. "Are you lost?" she asks, as if that would be the only reason why Santana might want to visit this part of the camp.

Santana doesn't reply.

Rachel seems to take Santana's silence as affirmation to her question, as well as continued evidence of Santana's hopelessness. Rachel makes what she probably considers a sweet face, but ends up looking at Santana the way one would at a child who's put her shoes onto the wrong feet and can't figure out why her toes pinch. She smiles and takes a step toward Santana.

"This is where the old circus families live," she says helpfully and in a very loud voice, totally unaware that Santana had already reasoned as much out on her own. Rachel points to the tent closest to where she stands, to her right. "That's our tent," she announces. She indicates the one next to it, which is the largest of the lot. "And that's the Evans' tent. The one after it belongs to the ringmaster and his wife."

Santana's curiosity about Brittany gets the better of her.

She points to the lone tent on the other side of the alley. "What's that one?" she asks.

A flash of wariness passes over Rachel's features. "Mr. Pierce lives there," she says quietly, her voice an octave lower than it normally would be, a certain furtiveness worn into her brow.

"What about his daughter?" Santana asks, even though she knows she ought not to.

"Oh, Brittany lives there, too."

Santana wonders why Rachel omitted Brittany in the first place.

(Brittany is the most important part of everything, after all.)

For a second, Santana and Rachel stare at one another, and Santana can't help but wonder if Rachel can discern her lies. Does she know that Santana didn't stumble into this area of camp by mistake? If so, will she reveal Santana's trespassing to Ma Jones or Ken or Mr. Adams? Santana realizes that Rachel likes her less with every passing performance. She can only imagine that Rachel might enjoy a chance to get her into trouble or even have her fired.

"Where were you headed?" Rachel asks after a minute.

_(To Brittany.)_

"I—," Santana stammers.

"If you're looking for Mrs. Schuester, you'll probably find her over there," Rachel says presumptuously, pointing toward the circus midway, and, beyond that, the dressing tents. She seems to think that if Santana has just left Ma Jones' kitchen, she must have work to do with Mrs. Schuester otherwise.

Santana wants to say something to throw Rachel off but can't do so without revealing that she had come to this part of camp snooping for Brittany and skiving her chores. She feels her face harden.

"Thank you," she says tersely, not really grateful at all, turning on her heel and stalking toward the midway before Rachel can think of anything more to say to her or ask her any questions.

Only after Santana bypasses the billboards does she allow herself to relax. She sighs, shoulders loosening. She knows Rachel probably didn't mean to frighten her or to interrupt her search for Brittany, but somehow she can't help but dislike Rachel for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It seems inconsiderate of her.

Of anyone in the company, Rachel Berry seems to possess the greatest propensity for annoying Santana, even more than Puck or the nasty, gossiping kitchen girls.

Santana steps out from under the kaleidoscope colors of the billboards, which stand resplendent in the midmorning sun. She doesn't especially want to be on this side of camp all alone before the show, but as long as she finds herself here, she supposes that she might as well try to search for Brittany near the elephant pen or maybe even inside the big top, if her time permits.

She cuts through the booths lining the midway and slips between the sideshow and the men's dressing tent, her bare feet falling on a carpet of prairie dropseed grass, taking in every bump and divot of the earth beneath their soles.

A light wind blows in from the east, headed toward the lake on the far side of the camp, and Santana presses into it, happy as it lifts her hair from her shoulders and licks through her blouse, cooling her.

Just then, Santana rounds the side of the ladies' dressing tent and nearly blunders into someone.

Finn Hudson.

"Whoa!" Finn says, stepping back before Santana collides with him.

He carries a broad wooden crate in his arms. It bears a crude paint label, which reads KNIGHTS COST. Santana spies a corner of blue fabric poking through its slats. She supposes that the crate must hold the finished outcome of the sewing job she and Brittany began yesterday.

It takes a half-second for Santana to realize that Finn had been about two steps away from entering the ladies' dressing tent—and apparently for the sake of depositing a crate of finished men's costumes in a place where they don't especially belong. Santana's brow scrunches in confusion.

"What are you doing?" she asks, harshly and on impulse.

Finn's face blanks, his jaw slackening and eyes dimming, as if someone had turned down the electric lights in all his rooms. He seems confused on two counts: first, as to why Santana thinks she has the right to rebuke him, and, second, as to why he has elicited her rebuke. He glances between Santana and the dressing tent.

When he doesn't answer Santana right away, she clarifies her complaint.

"That's the ladies' dressing tent," she says firmly, nodding toward the tent flaps. "Why were you going in there?"

Again, her voice comes out harsh. Something about the idea of Finn Hudson intruding upon women in a state of undress upsets her to the point where she feels sharp as nails against him.

Suddenly, Finn seems to understand the situation.

"Oh!" he says, eyes brightening at once. "I know it is! I was just gonna leave the gowns at the door."

"The gowns?" Santana repeats, uncomprehending.

Finn gestures to the crate in his arms, lifting it up against his chest.

"But those are the knight costumes," Santana says, pointing at the label printed across the crate. Her voice sounds harsher than ever. Finn's foolishness utterly baffles her.

For an instant, Finn looks as if he wants to make some retort to Santana—to end his conversation with her as quickly as possible so that he can resume his task. But then his retort seems to die on his tongue. Once more, his face blanks, all his lights out again.

"They are?"

Finn looks from Santana to the crate in his arms, entirely bewildered. After a second, he shakes his head, consternated. When he fully realizes his mistake, his expression clouds over, and his lips thin upon his face. He tightens his grip against the crate. "I am so stupid!" he barks, looking away from Santana down the midway pitch.

He hasn't disparaged the person Santana expected him to disparage.

His upset seems disproportionate to his mistake, and Santana doesn't understand why.

Certainly, it was foolish of him to take up the wrong crate without realizing it, and, certainly, he ought to have read the crate label, but—

Suddenly, Santana realizes what's happening.

"You can't read, can you?" she exclaims.

Finn meets her eyes, alarmed at her deduction. He stammers, caught, "Huh? What are—? Sure I can!"

Santana doesn't have to know Finn any better than she does—which is to say not very well at all—in order to recognize how he has just told her a lie. Embarrassment roses his cheeks, and he casts his eyes downward to the turf under his feet.

He picked up the wrong crate because he didn't check its contents for himself, and he couldn't read the label.

For an instant, Santana feels pity for Finn that he shouldn't be able to do something that almost everyone like him can do, but her pity evanesces when he turns his attention back to her.

"Wait," he says, daring to meet Santana's eyes again, "you can read, then?"

A terse, almost accusatory note rings in his voice.

Santana hesitates, uncertain as to whether she ought to reveal her skill. She remembers the Tenderloin district and the boarding house. A phantom pain ghosts at her jaw, and she winces on impulse.

The rules say that someone like Finn should know how to read, and someone like Santana shouldn't. However, the rules also say that if someone like Finn asks someone like Santana a question, then she must supply him with an honest answer, if she can.

Santana looks down to her toes against the grass. She shrugs, downplaying, but speaks the truth.

"Yes, I can."

When she glances up, she finds Finn staring at her, his expression somewhere between being agog and longing. He acts like a little child, coveting a playmate's toy. If he could reach out and snatch Santana's ability for himself, Santana has no doubt that he would do so. She squirms under his attention.

It takes another minute before Finn speaks again.

"What are you doing over here anyway?" he asks, glancing around, realizing where he and Santana stand and at what hour. He seems somehow like a great toddler meeting a familiar adult in a strange setting.

"Looking for someone," Santana says bluntly; she doesn't mention for whom.

"Oh," Finn says again.

Before Finn can ask her anymore questions, Santana heads him off. "You'll want to take those over there, to that tent," she says, pointing toward the men's dressing tent.

Finn stares at Santana for another spell before shifting the crate in his arms again. If he has more questions for her, he refrains from asking them. "Thanks," he says slowly, starting to make his departure.

Somehow, he doesn't sound precisely grateful for the direction.

Santana nods but doesn't reply.

Frankly, she feels less interested in helping Finn than she does in getting rid of him.

The longer Santana talks to Finn, the less she knows what to make of the boy. He treated her rudely upon their first meeting, but he doesn't seem malicious. Santana must therefore suppose that Finn is the type of person who probably never means to hurt anything but who somehow does anyhow.

Finn steps toward the men's dressing tent, and Santana takes that as her cue to make her escape. Though she doesn't doubt that Rachel Berry could get her into trouble for trespassing where she ought not to go, Santana doesn't fear Finn Hudson, who seems to have enough trouble being in the right place in the right time himself that he couldn't condemn Santana for the same fault.

Santana slips under the shadow curling around the big top, finding the grass suddenly cooler beneath her feet than it was before. She can only hope that the next person she encounters will be Brittany.

* * *

><p>It isn't Brittany.<p>

Santana checks at the elephant pen—and even says hello to Methuselah out of politeness for Brittany as their common acquaintance—and pokes her head inside the big top, but doesn't encounter Brittany anywhere or happen upon any clues as to Brittany's whereabouts at all.

As her search wears on, Santana becomes increasingly fidgety; she doesn't know the time and fears that the show bell will ring at any minute. Disappointed, she decides to return to her own tent, hoping but also despairing to hope that Brittany will find her there, like she did yesterday.

Brittany doesn't find her there, though.

Puck does.

Almost as soon as Santana sets down on her cot, she hears the tent flaps rustle behind her.

"Ladybird?" Puck says, ducking through the door.

Everything about his manner seems different from how it did this morning.

For one thing, his voice sounds lighter, questioning and sweet, rather than accusatory. For another thing, he no longer moves like he has something to put behind him; his gestures seem small, gentled, and forward facing. He reminds Santana of that little boy again, the same one she saw in him at the train station when he set his hat upon her head. He wears the faintest ghost of his idiot smile.

With such a remarkable change in Puck's behavior, Santana fails to notice what he carries in his hands—that is, until he offers it to her.

Flowers, a whole bouquet of them.

Santana spies little clusters of mellow orange velvetleaf, tubular bastard indigo, and wild sarsaparilla, all of which Santana has seen growing along the borders of the camp. The bouquet is pretty and much cleaner than the dandelion Sam gave to Ma Jones yesterday at breakfast.

Puck extends the bouquet to Santana like he fears she'll take his hand along with the blooms, if she accepts his gift at all.

"Ladybird, I'm sorry," he says suddenly. "I shouldn't have cussed at you. I'm sorry I upset you. I... I wish you'd talk to me. I don't us like being angry at each other. Could you find it in your heart to forgive me?"

He drops to one knee, and Santana's heart twists within her chest; she suddenly feels immensely nervous and like there isn't enough air in the tent for her to breathe. She wishes very much that Puck would stand up again and strokes her thumb over the thread ring at her finger. She doesn't dare to move.

Puck sets his hands on Santana's knees, still holding the flowers in one hand, and leans down very close to her. Though it seems like the strangest thing in the world to notice at the moment, Santana can't help but realize that Puck smells different than he usually does—somehow cleaner than he has since leaving New York—like buff skin and menthol, a scent Santana recognizes from her father's surgeon bag.

"I—," Santana says, not quite sure how to accept an apology from Puck, as he's never made one for her before until now.

Santana wishes she could feel real remorse for shouting at Puck yesterday, but she doesn't. Her only regret is that she made a fool of herself in front of the circus and then cried about it. Nothing that she said was untrue. She vacillates, torn between the hard feeling in her chest and her grandmother's old lectures about forgiveness and Christian kindness.

Puck must sense her hesitation.

"Ladybird," he says earnestly, "I promised your pa that I would take care of you—"

His statement comes as a shock to Santana, who hadn't realized that Puck ever spoke to her father concerning her at all.

"—I promised it on his grave, at his funeral, and I mean to make good on what I said."

Oh.

For a second, Santana wonders what her father would think of Puck and his lies and about Santana following Puck all the way across the country to join the circus. Would Santana's father approve of her becoming a gypsy girl and playing with fire and reading fortunes for strangers in the afternoon heat? What would he say about her costume and her living conditions? About this tent?

(About Brittany?)

Santana never asked her father what he wanted for her before he died; she never got the chance. Sometimes Santana thinks that her father would have had her stay in the bachelor cottage always—his little girl forever, waiting for him at the garden gate with Sweet Williams in her hair.

Santana means to question Puck as to what he thinks it means, taking care of someone who relies on you, but instead she says, "You smell different."

What she really means is that he smells familiar, like her father, and that she misses her father, who cared for her so well and never asked her for anything that she would not gladly give.

Puck smirks his devilish smirk. "It's our bath day," he says simply.

He seems to take Santana's statement as her acceptance of his apology.

It's probably for the best that he does so.

"Bath day?"

"Sure thing, ladybird. We get a turn to bath every three days. It's our family's turn today."

(Santana feels a pang at the word and another at the hopefulness in Puck's voice.)

(She thinks of Brittany's tent, much sturdier than this one.)

Puck shrugs. "They have a shower area set up behind the dressing tents. When you go, they'll have a line of buckets and a bar of soap. You get one bucket for yourself. Best way to do it is to hang your clothes over the rung after you get inside, soap up first, and then toss the water over you, half a bucket for scrubbin', half to suds off. It's easy. Maybe Rachel can show you after the matinee," he says.

This new information overwhelms Santana, who doesn't know what Puck means by his instructions and can hardly fathom the prospect of bathing herself out of doors. The prospect of bathing in itself interests Santana very much, but how will she ever go about it?

Since arriving at the circus, Santana hadn't very well considered where one might bathe herself or wash her clothes; those were the sorts of things that Santana and her grandmother took care of themselves, quietly and without ceremony, at the bachelor cottage, where they had running water and a big cast iron clawfoot bathtub, lined in porcelain.

In New York, Santana usually only bathed thrice a week—once on Sunday night, once on Wednesday morning, and once on Friday afternoon—but it occurs to her now that she never allowed herself to become as dirty at the bachelor cottage as she has at the circus.

She can smell the sweat on herself. Her skin seethes with dirt from boxcar floors and falling down in circus rings. It feels tight with scrapes, swollen with bug bites, and itchy all over from dried perspiration, harsh wind, and too much sun. Her hair has taken on a coarser, fuller quality here than ever it did at the bachelor cottage, where Santana and her grandmother kept it combed to dark silk.

As Santana carries away into her own thoughts, despairing for her own unkemptness and imagining a bath, Puck rises from his place in front of her, setting the bouquet gently on the cot at her side. He smirks and steps to the corner of the tent, procuring his rucksack. He then proceeds to dig through the rucksack's contents.

"I got you something," he says brightly.

Santana snaps to attention, suddenly nervous again. "What?"

Puck straightens up from where he crouches and turns to show Santana what he holds in his hands: a tambourine. He smiles, cockeyed and dog-happy, obviously pleased with himself for finding the instrument for her. Santana doesn't understand why she might want a tambourine, and her confusion must show on her face. Puck laughs and kneels in front of Santana again.

"I know you don't like fire dancing, so I figured that from now on, maybe you could just dance instead," he explains, extending the tambourine to Santana, still wearing his grin.

The instrument jangles when Santana touches it. She takes it gingerly into her hands. Santana has never held a tambourine before. She finds it pretty in the same way one might a painting or a sculpture; the little tin discs fitted loosely in its wooden slats shine in the thin stream of light pouring into the tent between the door flaps.

All of a sudden, Santana feels immensely grateful to Puck.

She looks up with him as if seeing him for the first time; he really isn't a bad fellow. Not everyone can admit to misbehaving and not everyone makes up for misbehavior with true thoughtfulness. Puck might be a rapscallion and rough, but he has a heart—one that loves the circus and performance and Mr. Adams, and which compels him to take care of Santana, whatever its foolhardy reason for doing so might be.

Briefly, Santana considers the finality of her and Puck's agreement and wonders if maybe one day these fleeting bursts of fondness she feels from him could settle into something more permanent and eager—if not love, then at least admiration. She thinks life would be easiest if they could, if she could make herself feel that way.

(Sometimes Santana feels a wall inside of her and keeps running up against it.)

"Thank you," she says in a small voice, setting the tambourine down beside the flowers.

"You're welcome, ladybird," Puck nods.

The next thing Santana knows, Puck leans into her from his place on the grass, reaching up to touch a finger to the underside of her chin. He lifts her face and presses close. Before Santana can react to his motion, Puck kisses her again, like he did in Worthington, his warm mouth fitting over her lips, open and wet. Santana draws a breath and halts.

She tries to sink into Puck's kiss as a thank you or as goodwill. She tries to do it because it would be easy. She closes her eyes and concentrates, sensing Puck flush up against her, but all she can feel of him is heat and craving and all she can feel of herself is an emptiness, like the echo of a pewter cup ringing out as it clatters upon a marble floor. Without meaning to do it, Santana begins to think of better, more perfect kisses.

Santana thinks of Brittany.

_(Brittany.)_

"I have to go!" Santana starts, flinching away from Puck as though his very touch might poison her. He looks up at Santana, startled at her sudden movement and confused as to why she pulled away. His eyes turn deep and muddled with something, like tea that brewed for too long in the pot.

"You have to go where?" he asks.

Santana says the first thing that comes to mind: "I have to go bathe. I have to bathe before the show."

Puck couldn't seem more surprised if Santana's father were to burst into their tent, alive and recently enlisted in the circus as a clown. Puck's eyebrows lift and his mouth falls open.

"Right now?" he says, leaning back on his haunches.

Santana takes the opportunity to stand up off the cot. She nods her head frantically, her heart in her throat. Fear, syncopated and lively, plays all over her everywhere. Her thoughts swim around her head like dregs swirled at the bottom of a coffee cup. Everything seems too much and too close. The moment happens in a rush.

"I'll see you at the show," she says. "I have to... I have to go."

Puck stares at Santana, real concern painted over his face as she fumbles at the tent flaps. He absentmindedly checks his watch. "You have a half-hour," he says numbly, tucking the watch back into his pocket. Santana may as well have slapped him, for his stunned expression.

"Half-hour," Santana repeats, rabbit-jittery.

She steps out of the tent into the light, going to anywhere that isn't with Puck, to anywhere where he can't kiss her. She wipes his kiss from her lips.

(It feels like Puck took something that doesn't belong to him.)

* * *

><p>Santana figures that if she must baffle Puck, she at least ought not to lie to him, as well, and so finds herself heading toward the dressing tents for the second time in a day. She walks briskly, feeling like she did as a little child, when sometimes she would run upstairs from the ground floor of the bachelor cottage at night, convinced that something chased her from below.<p>

(Today, it feels like the danger lurks inside her rather than at her heels in the dark.)

Santana finds the shower area exactly as Puck described it: just beyond the dressing tents stand two small stalls comprised of a curtain fitted around a crude, wooden frame. At the edge of the stalls, Santana spies a row of aluminum buckets, each large enough to hold about two gallons of water. As Santana steps closer to the arrangement, she also sees a single bar of amber tallow soap, pellucid in the sunlight, waiting beside the buckets.

"Hello?" Santana calls, hoping that she won't disturb anyone, coming here.

No one responds.

Feeling somewhat bolder now that she finds herself alone, Santana approaches the shower stall closest to the ladies' dressing tent and discovers a small ledger and a nubby pencil on a string dangling from the lintel of the stall.

Upon closer examination, she finds that the ledger starts with a sheet of paper containing today's date, written in messy handwriting, beneath which appears a series of paired numbers: 6-10, 6-11, 6-12, 6-13, 6-14, 6-15, 6-16. Someone has drawn in a checkmark beside number 6-10. On the next page of the ledger, she finds tomorrow's date and more paired numbers. The ledger continues after that fashion on each subsequent page.

Since Santana doesn't understand the significance of the numbers—she supposes that they might represent various tents but doesn't know which tents, in particular—she leaves the ledger where it hangs and pulls back the dressing curtain, interested to see the bathing accommodations at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie firsthand.

It turns out that the inside of the shower stall consists of very little, aside from a short, three-legged stool and a tall pole which supports an implement that looks rather like Santana's grandmother's brass cooking colander—or, essentially, a bowl with tiny holes poked into the bottom of it. Santana looks between the shower stall and the buckets standing outside it and tries to recall Puck's instructions for bathing.

She knows that Puck cautioned her to only use half her water supply at a time, but, beyond that, she can't remember that he told her anything particularly useful. She thinks through her order of operations: she knows she must take the bucket and soap into the stall with her before disrobing and that she must find somewhere to set her clothing where it won't get wet once inside the stall.

From there, she feels less certain as to what to do.

It occurs to Santana that if she pours the water from her bucket into the suspended colander, the colander might empty itself before she can stand beneath it to wash. Curious, she steps into the stall and under the colander to find that the implement actually includes a small hatch which will slide to cover and uncover the holes at its bottom by means of a small knob.

The contraption is actually rather ingenious.

Santana supposes that she must shut the latch on the colander before filling it with water from her bucket and then open the hatch to enjoy her shower. She can use the stool to reach the colander bowl.

Briefly, Santana feels pleased with herself for determining how to use the shower all on her own, even without Rachel Berry to help her, and smiles, but then she realizes that she's alone and also how very little time she has to put the shower to use, at this point.

As quickly as possible, Santana carries both the soap and the bucket, which she finds filled nearly to the brim, into the stall with her, taking extra effort not to slosh water as she moves. She slides the dressing curtain shut behind her and, with some trepidation for being out of doors, begins to undress, hoping that no one will come to the stall while she stands naked inside of it, with only a thin sheet of canvas in place to preserve her modesty.

Once she completely undresses, Santana drapes her skirt, blouse and sashes over the rung on the stall frame and takes a deep breath, adjusting to the new experience of standing naked under the sunlight. Somehow, Santana imagines that she should feel cold, but she doesn't; her skin soaks in heat, keeping it as a confidante will a secret. She feels as rugged and resourceful as Elizabeth in _The Swiss Family Robinson_.

As Santana wets the soap bar in the water bucket, it suddenly strikes her as strange that she should find herself standing in ankle-deep grass whilst bathing, with no tile or porcelain anywhere around. She smirks, lathering her skin, refamiliarizing herself with her body after so many days of hiding it under yards and yards of calico and other cloths.

In washing, Santana discovers patches of her old bachelor cottage self—in the paleness of her breasts and belly and the smoothness of her skin on her upper legs where her petticoats protect her from circus scrapes and bruises—that cause her to feel less like the gypsy girl she saw in the mirror at the shop this morning and more like Santana, _la querida de su abuelita_.

Hoisting the bucket up to the colander while standing on the stool proves something of a chore. Even on tiptoe, Santana can scarcely reach the colander, and, beyond that, she finds it difficult to lift such a heavy bucket directly over her head. Pouring water into the colander without spilling it requires her most careful attention. Sheer luck is all that prevents her from falling off the stool as she performs her dizzying task.

Santana doesn't know precisely what to expect when she finally opens the hatch to the colander, but what she experiences is a sudden spray of water that rains unevenly over her hair and shoulders, hitting her in some places but mostly falling on the ground.

(One of the curses that Will the Ringmaster muttered under his breath this morning pops into Santana's head, and she almost says it aloud.)

(It's strange how so much happens in a day at the circus and yet nothing much seems to happen at all.)

Santana scrubs at her skin with her palms, working the soap that clings to it into a better lather, and combs her fingers through her wet hair, working out the kinks. At first, her hair feels flossed, with little knots here and there and a matte bunched at the back of her neck, but after several minutes and much effort, Santana manages to at least partially tame it, weaving some of the old silk back into her locks.

The second time Santana opens the water hatch, she feels more prepared to do so, knowing where to stand to catch most of the stream. The ground squishes underneath her feet and wet grass creeps at her heels. She sluices soap residue from her skin.

Right then, the show bell rings.

Right then, Santana realizes that she hasn't any towel with which to dry herself.

_(God damn it.)_

* * *

><p>Santana has never dressed so quickly before in her life—and especially not fresh from bathing, without even toweling her body dry first.<p>

Her clothes cling to her damp skin, making it difficult for her to fit her sleeves and skirt properly over herself, and Will and Puck's best cusswords run races around her head. She grits her teeth, wondering how she could be so foolish as to think she could bathe herself, dress, and ready herself for the morning fair in less than one half-hour. She hopes that Ken won't flay her alive for running late; if she had her grandmother's rosary with her, she might even consider praying it to ask the God in whom she does not believe to secure for her Ken's mercy.

She exits the stall still hitching her belt into place on her waist and bolts barefoot toward the midway, her half-tied scarves flapping at her hips, bangles jangling over her wrists and at her ankle. She immediately starts to sweat, all the cool of her shower gone.

Though Santana intends to sprint all the way to her booth along the midway, she doesn't make it so very far before she stops dead in her tracks.

Passing the sideshow, she happens upon a scene which halts her mid-stride: a strange man stands in the middle of the pitch, dressed in an austere black frock coat and high white collar. He sports the kind of beard without a moustache that Santana associates with elderly farmers and holds a book high over his head, waving it toward the blue sky.

The man is a preacher, his book a Bible.

A crowd comprised of circus people and circus patrons clusters around him. He shouts in a loud, harsh voice, his words ringing out between the booths as if he had one of Mr. Edison's megaphones.

"Woe unto the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, for they shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone! Woe unto this den of sin and this perverse generation!"

He sounds positively vehement, and suddenly Santana feels both afraid and ashamed for a very different reason than she did just a minute ago. Some of the circus folk in the crowd mutter at the preacher and wave their hands at him as if he's a foul odor and they want to clear him from the air. For their parts, most of the patrons appear uncomfortable, staring at their feet and whispering amongst themselves concerning the commotion.

Without warning, the preacher looks directly at Santana and points an accusing finger at her. The suddenness of his shift sends a jolt of fear straight through Santana, and she cowers.

"Woe unto the harlots!" the preacher spits.

Even though his eyes burn with the kind of hellfire that Santana's grandmother promised Santana awaited those who sinned without remorse, Santana feels cold to her bones and shrinks where she stands, unable to look away from the preacher or move or even blink.

The preacher continues. "The Devil has hold over you! The Devil has put wickedness into your heart—!"

"Hey!"

The sound of a new voice shouting over that of the preacher snaps Santana back to attention, and she turns to see three burly supes charging down the midway toward the preacher at a full run. One of the supes is Shane, the wagon driver from this morning; another David, one of the scoundrels who harassed Santana on the train ride to Mankato yesterday; and the third is a supe whom Santana recognizes by sight but not by name. He's dark, like she is—Ma Jones would maybe call him _yeller_.

"Woe unto the hypoc—!"

The preacher doesn't manage to finish his admonition before the three supes fall upon him. David dives for the man's right arm, the supe whose name Santana doesn't know for his left, and Shane curves around the man's back to grab him up from behind. The preacher lets out a loud grunt as the three supes overwhelm him, manhandling him more roughly than Will did the spotted ass earlier in the day. Upon impact, the preacher drops his Bible, and Santana lets out a surprised yelp, as do several of the women standing around her.

She only notices Mr. Adams approaching the scene a second later.

"Get him outta here, boys!" Mr. Adams roars in his lion voice, gesturing for the supes to drag the preacher off the circus premises beyond the end of the big top. Ken toddles behind Mr. Adams, looking sourer than even he usually does at the whole situation.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Adams!" David says quickly, muscling the preacher forward, restraining the fellow as he struggles.

"Woe unto the moneychangers!" the preacher shouts, pointing at Mr. Adams, practically frothing.

For his part, Mr. Adams stares the preacher down. Once the supes haul the preacher past Mr. Adams, Mr. Adams stoops and retrieves the preacher's Bible from the ground, entirely nonchalant. He flips the book open in his hands and peruses it casually, as might a boy waiting for his Sunday school teacher to arrive to a lesson.

After a minute, Mr. Adams glances around at the assembled crowd, some members of which have begun to murmur. He offers a warm smile. "Never a dull day at the circus," he shrugs, acting as if, in his world, having three giant supes bodily remove a ravening fire-and-brimstone preacher from the midway is something that happens too often to fuss about.

The assembled townsfolk laugh, and the circus people shrug.

"Little missus!" Ken calls to Santana, gesturing her over to him.

She startles.

(She had forgotten herself, for the moment.)

For the first time since he arrived on the scene, Santana notices that Ken holds the peacock-colored knapsack in which she keeps her tarot cards. As she approaches Ken, he shoves the knapsack roughly toward her, scowling.

"Your mister brought these for you," he says meanly. "Now, to your booth with you! We're already running late for the show."

Santana doesn't say anything; she just accepts the knapsack and nods, clutching it tightly to her body as though it might somehow save her. As the crowd that surrounded the preacher disperses, Santana watches Mr. Adams go away, too. He keeps the preacher's Bible in his hand and shakes his head softly; he somehow seems very distant, even though he stands not ten steps from Santana. The look in his eyes carries with it a certain familiar disappointment that causes Santana to shiver when she sees it. Light frames him to the side; he looks like an icon in profile, lined with gold filigree.

As Ken leads Santana down the midway to her booth, the words of the preacher ring in her ears.

(The preacher man isn't the first person to tell Santana that she carries the Devil inside her heart.)

* * *

><p>Santana gives her first bad palm reading.<p>

She doesn't mean to do it, of course, but somehow she can't pay enough attention to the man in front of her to even tell him what color eyes he has, let alone his future. She fidgets, still feeling deeply incriminated by what the preacher said to her on the midway and off-kilter for arriving late to the fair after her shower. Her hair hangs wet around her face; she can feel it curling in the humid afternoon air. She wants to be anywhere but at the center of a crowd. Sometimes everything just seems to move too quickly and shine too brightly.

(It seems like Santana hasn't ever stopped running since joining the circus.)

(She wonders if the circus will keep her running until the day she dies.)

"You will meet someone who will... give you... something...," she trails.

She doesn't know the man's occupation, and, even though she's glanced at him no fewer than a dozen times in the last minute, she can't keep a clear image of him in her mind. Is the man is rich or poor, old or young, here or there? She doesn't know. Santana wets her lips and swallows.

"You will... go..."

Her grandmother's accent keeps slipping off her tongue, ill-fitted to it. She sounds unfocused, American, and scared to death of something weeks old and faraway.

(She is all of those things.)

In the end, Santana mumbles something about how the man will venture to the West and frightens him by staring at his palm for too long, as though it's an arithmetic problem she might manage to never solve. The man thanks Santana for her time but walks away from her stunned. The rest of the crowd isn't altogether as kind to her as he is. They mutter and boo Santana until she feels as if the bottom of her stomach may well drop out.

"Hey-o, Gypsy Santana!"

_Oh God._

Santana searches through the crowd and immediately spots several of the boys who taunted her during her morning in downtown St. James. They loiter near the back of the congregation that surrounds her gazebo, grinning cheekily and when her eyes meet theirs. The tallest and oldest of them tips his hat to her. Despite their smiles, he and his companions don't actually look friendly at all. Santana's heart picks up.

"Gypsy Santana Rossetti!" one of the boys singsongs. Several persons turn to look at him. He clears his throat. "A love poem for the gypsy Santana," he announces, and then begins a recitation: _"... nam quotiens futuit, totiens ulciscitur ambos: illam affligit odore, ipse perit podagra—!"_

Santana has never encountered this poem before, but she can tell from the way it rollicks and rolls like restless sea waves, with trilled consonants and deep, low vowel troughs, that it must be Latin. She can also tell from the way the schoolboys laugh and snigger at the poem that it must be vulgar. Santana blushes furiously, desperate for invisibility now more than ever before.

"Hey-o, gypsy girl!"

"Santana! Santana!"

Just when Santana thinks she might die of the red in her face, Ken appears at the edge of the crowd, cross as usual, though not with Santana, for once.

"You scoundrels!" he hollers, waving his bowler hat at the boys, dispersing them from where they stand. "Off with you! You let her alone!"

At first, Santana worries that the boys won't heed Ken—they laugh at him and snatch at his hat—but after a minute they do go, pretending that they depart on their own whim, rather than for fear of the stout, blotchy man shouting threats at them. The oldest, tallest boy winks over his shoulder at Santana, and she closes her eyes as if to ward away his look.

When she opens her eyes again, she finds a young man clothed in the finest suit she has ever seen standing before her, smiling amusedly at Ken and the sunshine and at her and everything.

"I would like for you to read your cards for me," he says brightly, taking a seat in the chair in front of her.

The crowd surrounding them titters with excitement. Santana hears someone hiss _That's the Hammond heir!_ and a couple of bystanders bless their souls because, apparently, the young man is the Hammond heir, indeed. Of course, Santana doesn't know who the Hammonds are, but, by the way people react, she supposes that they must be an influential family in the town.

Suddenly, Santana wishes she could have the boys back taunting her, if only to avoid reading cards for such a powerful stranger.

The man can't be much older than thirty, but, based on his clothing, Santana supposes that he possesses a great wealth.

His face recalls that of a kind little lap dog, with sad eyes and a soft mouth. He sports an English moustache, with his light, wheaten hair coiffed into waves. Though he smiles, he nevertheless maintains a certain tragic aspect to his person. If he weren't so obviously wealthy, Santana would wonder if he were an actor, for his melancholic visage could well recommend him to such a profession.

He wears a finely tailored navy-colored ditto suit with silk-laced lapels and striped trousers. His tie pin, cufflinks, and watch chain glint gold in the sunlight, and the paisley pattern on his Ascot is so intricate and kaleidoscopic that Santana nearly loses herself in it, as a Kipling character might lose himself in the thick of an Indian jungle. The man's every stitch and seam appears perfectly sewn and starched.

He doffs his smart, black top hat, setting it on his lap for courtesy, and smiles across the table at Santana.

Immediately, Santana feels guilty, admiring the man's clothing so much, knowing how their interaction will likely end.

"You sure no palm reading?" she says in her grandmother's accent, hoping that maybe the man might change his mind.

"No, just the tarot reading for today," he replies. He speaks in a pleasant, eager tone and stares at Santana's cards expectantly.

Santana aches inside.

The man has no idea what he just asked her for.

Brittany doesn't believe in cards—she told Santana so yesterday, just as plainly as she might tell Santana what kind of sop she prefers for her bread or that she works as a human not-a-target in the circus. Santana wishes she could be like Brittany, who well may live a fearless life but knows that she isn't and can't be.

The truth is that Santana carries uneasiness deep in her bones, one born of her grandmother's superstitions, her own experiences, and of her relentless suspicion that there must be a reason why so many omissions and lies follow her and have followed her since birth.

Santana has read tarot four times before in her life, and each time to a one she has drawn the Death card. She would refuse the young man seated in front of her his reading if she could, but with Ken hovering so close, she knows she ought not to—that Ken wouldn't allow it, even if she tried.

If only Santana could explain, in a meaningful way, that there are three graves dug deep into New York soil on account of her and her prodigious abilities with the cards, then maybe the young man might withdraw his request or Ken might excuse Santana from her duties.

She thinks, for a moment, that it might be worth incurring Ken's ire, if only she could open her mouth to speak—to confess what she had wrought.

But her throat won't seem to work.

There's something jammed in it.

It hurts.

Santana bites her lip, eyes flicking between the cards stacked upon the table—their faces variegated and beautifully grotesque—the man, and Ken, who glares at Santana over the top of the crowd, transferring all the annoyance he felt toward the boys just a second ago to Santana again, as per his usual.

The man must sense Santana's trepidation.

"I shall compensate you with one-hundred dollars," he says, offering Santana an encouraging smile.

Before Santana can say anything, the man reaches into his pocket, producing a billfold from which he draws a single black and red note from amongst many other notes exactly like it. He sets the note on the table in front of Santana. Her eyes bug.

Sure enough, the note reads UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS in large, gothic font. It bears the image of a stern-looking man in military dress and a red spoked seal backset against the type. Santana spies the words LEGAL TENDER ACT JULY 11, 1890 printed at the bottom of the note. Her eyebrows lift so high on her forehead that they may well disappear beyond her hairline.

"It's yours if you'll do the reading," the man says, clearly amused at Santana's reaction to the money.

Santana is not the only one who can't believe the enormity of the man's offer; the crowd gathered around her table—about fifty persons in all—shocks at the sight of the bill, hissing out whispers of envy and disbelief, and, from the looks of it, Ken nearly swallows his own tongue in surprise. His beady eyes open wider than Santana has ever seen them open before, and he looks frantically at Santana over the heads of the patrons, nodding at her to take the money and do the reading, for the love of God, please.

For all of Ken's and the audience's excitement, Santana feels positively ill.

She wants so much to believe that if she reads the man's cards, nothing bad will come of it. She wants to believe the same as Brittany does that cards are just another silly circus trick, all about persuading the unobservant person to look one way when he really should be looking another. She wants to believe that the cards are as harmless as the Amazing Hiram's magician's act, wherein he replaces his daughter with a pretty deuce of doves. She wants to take the money, to please Ken, and to never have to fret about the fellow sitting in front of her again after he leaves her gazebo.

But she can't.

Her insides wrench, and her stomach turns over. She glances from the cards to the man to Ken and then finally to the tablecloth with its pretty peacock hues.

She knows that the man will die if she reads for him.

"Ma'am," Ken prods her, glaring and speaking through gritted teeth, "you mustn't keep the gentleman waiting."

Santana wishes that an _ángel custodio_ might deliver her but knows that she hasn't one.

_La niña sin bautizar. _

_Ella está sin la bendición._

Santana casts one last desperate look at the young man.

"Will you please shuffle?"

* * *

><p>The man chooses the Page of Pentacles to represent himself and Santana thinks, sadly, of what her grandmother might call his card—<em>el Príncipe de las Monedas<em>—and how her patron might not live to inherit his fortune at all.

As she lays the cards, a leaden dread fills her belly.

In the column of the self, Santana finds Wands and Cups, the image of the man surveying his kingdom, about to embark on a journey. She senses wishful thinking and a striving toward something—maybe wealth—before she encounters a deep sense of melancholy, like mourning for a loss that has yet to transpire.

As she reads, she starts to feel the strange old humor overtake her, soaking into her like the scent of perfume into curtains in a dressing room. Her hands tremble as she lays Pentacles, more Wands, and the Wheel of Fortune from the Major Arcana, Temperance, the World, and, as part of the unknown, Swords upon Swords upon Swords. She sees signs of romance—the Lovers, the World, the Three of Cups—but also of a sudden accident.

Each time Santana lays a card, she fears. The man never removes his gaze from her.

She doesn't even make it to the last column before it happens.

Death.

Santana flips the card and starts as though she has pricked herself with a pin while sewing. Even though she had expected and dreaded the card, seeing it on the table somehow comes as the worst kind of shock. Santana blinks her eyes, hoping that the card might disappear, that she had dreamed up from a nightmare.

The card doesn't disappear or fade into dreams, though.

Someone laughs nervously.

(Santana takes another second to realize that it's her.)

"Madame?" says the man, a note of fear in his voice.

"What do you see?" Ken gruffs, stepping closer to the table. He spots the Death card where it lays and flashes Santana a savage look, as if she revealed the card on purpose. His face turns dusky with blotches.

Santana doesn't remember setting the next three cards, but she must do so because she finds the full spread of twenty-one splayed out upon the intricate pattern of the tablecloth. A cacophony of color and gritty illustration squawk upon the cards like restless parrots in an aviary.

Ken glares Santana into speaking, and she mumbles something about how the man worries for his money, how he waits, and how he loves. She tries to make the Death card smaller than it is, quieter and less threatening, but as so many Swords surround it, she can't see anything but an abrupt and total end.

"You will... you are not long for breath," she says.

If she must foretell the man's death, she at least ought not to lie to him about it.

"You damned nigger gypsy," Ken mutters under his breath, and the crowd recoils both at his foul language and at Santana's macabre prediction. Santana can't bring herself to meet the young man's eyes. She thinks the tragedy that she saw in them before might be too much for her to bear now, if she were to glimpse it again.

The young man says, "You ought to feel ashamed," and retrieves the one-hundred dollar note from the table, tucking it angrily back inside his billfold.

The world moves around Santana like someone has swirled it with a great spoon. She had known she would draw the young man's Death from the moment he asked her to read for him. She had known she had no angels, only devils, and that the wickedness in her heart would seep from it as blood from a wound, staining everything.

The show bell rings just as the people in the crowd start to complain, annoyed that Santana lost her prize, unnerved at what she told their young gentleman.

Ken wrenches Santana up from her chair by the elbow, roughing her. "What the hell did you do that for?" he snarls into her ear, his putrid breath hot against her neck and face.

She hangs away from his touch like an indignant cat whose owner has taken it up by the scruff of its neck. She doesn't need Ken to tell her she's done wrong and so refuses to look directly at him, side-eyeing him instead. The young man melts into the crowd, a woman joining him at his side. He calls the woman by a pet name—_sweetheart_—and tells her not to fret about the foolish gypsy.

The man will die, since Santana read for him.

_La niña tiene una maldición._

Santana wants to apologize, but the man disappears before she finds her voice. The cards remain upon the table until Ken sweeps them off with the back of his hand, shuffling them into the tablecloth as though putting them out of sight will somehow undo the fate they've foretold.

* * *

><p>Ken drags Santana to the backstage area by her elbow, yanking her along so roughly that he nearly unhinges her arm from its socket and spewing out so many vociferous expletives along the way that Santana feels certain that people all the way back in Mankato will hear him. He calls Santana more kinds of nigger than Santana even knew existed and says words that would probably even cause Puck to cringe.<p>

Before he and Santana even reach the sideshow tent, Santana has tears in her eyes; she doesn't dare to cry them, though, for she knows that she deserves every bit of abuse that Ken heaps on her—and probably even more, too.

"Goddamned boot-lipped little quim, giving up one-hundred dollars like that and shaming the richest man in town! Goddamn little pickaninny!"

Ken jerks Santana's arm especially hard just then, and Santana's muscle sears as if torn. She winces and looks away, unable to look anymore on the hate twisting Ken's face. When she stumbles a little, Ken doesn't stop—he just drags her behind him and threatens to tell Mr. Adams about what she did to the Hammond heir.

Upon reaching the backstage area, Ken tosses Santana forward, and she staggers but doesn't fall down.

"No foul-ups!" Ken snarls, raising one of his piggy fingers to Santana in warning before stomping away, presumably to report Santana's misbehavior to Mr. Adams, if he can find him.

Santana's mouth hangs open. Tears burn, hot and uncomfortable, behind her eyes, but none fall. She stands stunned on the spot, rubbing her elbow, which still throbs where Ken wrenched it.

For a second, she blazes with anger at Ken and wants to chase after him and hurt him for hurting her, but then she remembers who she is and who Ken is and the rules, and then after that she remembers that she just told a man who had done nothing to cross her that he would die, and then she thinks about the sin in her cards and the sin in her heart and stands still, spent, duly punished.

"Hey, darlin'!"

(Just when Santana's heart ached so sorely that she thought it might never feel sweet again, Brittany calls to her.)

Santana watches Brittany appear from amidst the hubbub of the backstage area, jogging over the dirt, barefooted and smiling so widely that her face can scarcely contain it. Just seeing Brittany causes something to lift in Santana's chest, and, for an instant, Santana forgets the midway and what happened there, with even the pain in her arm evanescing. The idea that Brittany smiles for—no, because of—her fills her with an inexplicable sense of thankfulness and a fleet and golden thrill.

Her breath catches just behind her lips, waiting for something.

But the reprieve lasts for less than one second.

In the instant that Santana thinks about how glad she is that Brittany always seems pleased to see her, though perhaps no one else on earth shares Brittany's pleasure, Santana also thinks about how there is a reason why no one but Brittany welcomes her presence. She remembers that she has a curse and that Death follows her like her own shadow. She remembers that she just gave a stranger over to Death. Her heart twists beneath her breast, and tears blur her vision once more.

Brittany must perceive the change in Santana's countenance almost immediately, for her expression changes in a trice, smile dispersing like ripples from water, a curious and concerned look replacing it. Her brow furrows.

"Santana, what's wrong?" she asks, the pout on her face matching the tears brimming in Santana's eyes.

Though Santana opens her mouth to answer, she finds she can't say anything for fear that she'll start to cry. Her throat thickens, and her eyes well with even more tears. The thought that Brittany cares enough to ask her what's wrong pricks at Santana on top of everything else. How can Brittany show her all the kindness in the world when she deserves no kindness at all?

Santana opens and closes her mouth, managing only a one-shouldered shrug in response to Brittany's question. Brittany's face blurs behind the tears in her eyes.

"Oh, darlin'," Brittany says and she reaches out, fingertips brushing over Santana's wrist.

The touch doesn't stop Santana's guilt or the twist in her heart, but it does keep her from falling away into herself, from disappearing into her guilt. Brittany's pinky finger finds hers.

"Come on," Brittany says gently, leading Santana away from the backstage area.

She takes Santana past the aperture through which the little circus children watch the show and into the area between the elephant pen and the ladies' dressing tent, slipping them into afternoon shadows. No one can see them, tucked between the high palisades of the pen and the canvas walls of the tent. Everything feels quieter away from the big top and the company, still like a Brueghel painting.

Without speaking right away, Brittany studies Santana's features, eyes deep with concern and dark around the irises, like rainwater. She remains silent for the longest while, tracing over Santana's expression with her gaze. Eventually, she reaches out to touch against Santana's jaw, at first lightly and then with a surer stroke.

"You okay in there?" she asks.

"In where?"

Santana cringes before she even finishes asking the question. She knows what Brittany means and that Brittany wanted to give her something sweet. She immediately dislikes herself for being so practical, amongst so many other reasons.

"You know if you keep looking so sad like that, you might just break my heart," Brittany says.

She musters a small smile solely for the purpose of daring Santana to mirror it and chucks Santana's chin with the pad of her thumb. Santana all but curls into her touch, some of the poison leaving her.

"I gave another tarot reading," Santana confesses. "I think I just told a rich man he'll die."

Brittany cocks her head to one side and scrunches her brow.

"Oh, Santana," she says, her fingers stilling on Santana's cheek.

She steps closer to Santana, pouting to show her sympathy. Her hand that doesn't touch Santana's face finds Santana's wrist and brushes over it. She rubs circles into Santana's skin, and Santana softens, that same warm Brittany-interest returning to her from yesterday and the day before. Brittany smoothes back a lock of Santana's hair—finally dried—tucking it behind Santana's ear.

"Darlin', listen," she says, her voice so much more tremulous than her actions. "We don't have more than a minute before the show starts, but you have to know that you didn't do anything wrong at all. Don't let the cards worry you because they're not—you're not—"

It isn't like Brittany to stammer.

All her usual matter-of-factness is gone.

She looks like there's something just beyond herself and Santana that she wants desperately for Santana to see. Whatever the something is, she doesn't know how to lead Santana to it. Her eyes dart between Santana's eyes and mouth.

"Brittany?" Santana says breathlessly.

"You're gonna go out there and steal the show, darlin'," Brittany says.

Her eyes turn soft and fervent, just like they did at the top of the ladder and on the edge of the wood yesterday. Santana's breath hitches as Brittany leans forward and kisses her in the same way that she usually talks: just so.

The bow of Brittany's lip touches first, her bottom lip following it softly as a whisper; she kisses only Santana's bottom lip, her mouth pressing around it, feather-light but also certain. Brittany's hand stays at Santana's jaw, cupping it just under the hinge. She nods into the kiss until Santana can feel a heartbeat strong at every pulse point in response to it. Santana gasps against Brittany's mouth just before Brittany pulls away.

"What was that for?" Santana asks stupidly.

(Three and a half.)

"For luck," Brittany says simply. She gives Santana's wrist a squeeze and then looks at her seriously in that really-seeing way. "You okay to go on?"

Somehow Santana thinks that she might be.

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana scarcely manage to arrive at the backstage area in time for Santana to join Puck and Rachel and for Brittany to return to her own waiting place before the start of the grand processional. Puck reunites Santana with the tambourine he gave her earlier in the day and glares at Brittany retreating to the other end of the big top.<p>

"You can't just go running off whenever you like, ladybird," he says gruffly, but Santana hardly pays him mind, too busy watching Brittany go to care what Puck thinks at all.

Without a fire flail to frighten her, Santana discovers how well she likes the audience at the show. She dances, jingling her tambourine in time to the music, following Rachel across the ring, moving to the reel of emotion inside her rather than to any memorized routine. When the audience applauds, Santana feels as if she could continue to dance forever. She stays in the perfect pocket of the sound, knowing that for once the strangers who see her don't hate her at all.

When it comes time for the gypsy act, Santana fears for nothing. She watches the way the white stage lights catch on the tambourine disc and thinks about other kinds of light in the big top, remembering how it felt to perch at the top of the trapeze ladder and see sun refract upon the dust motes in the air.

As the final note of the gypsy song sounds, she finds herself standing at the fore of the ring beside Rachel, joining her and Puck in a bow, pleased that for once she has contributed to their performance.

She scurries off stage to the clatter of gracious applause.

Mr. Pierce makes no mistakes during today's knife throwing act. His face still appears as sullen and cloudy as ever, but he aims sure and doesn't shirk, his eyes locked on Brittany's as she stands in front of the board.

For her part, Brittany looks more beautiful than Santana has ever seen her look before, stage light threaded through her corn silk hair and cheeks slightly pinked from the rush of her performance. Brittany grins at the audience and when she does, Santana grins too, as devoted to Brittany as a believer to her prayers.

(Santana credits the success of the matinee entirely to Brittany's good luck kiss.)

* * *

><p>Ma Jones nabs Santana before she even makes it back to the residential camp.<p>

"May I borrow your missus?" she asks Puck.

Her voice carries a false sweetness again like it did when she enlisted Santana to accompany her to the store. Though what Ma says sounds like it should be a question, it isn't one. Her smile is so sharp she could bevel blades on it.

Puck puts up no contest to Ma's request. He nods, content to pass Santana into Ma Jones' charge, and speaks to Santana as an afterthought. "Be good, ladybird," he admonishes, as if Santana ever actually means to do otherwise.

Before he goes, Puck takes Santana's tambourine from her and packs it into his gear sack beside his own fire implements and the kerosene tin. Ma Jones doesn't wait for Puck to walk out of earshot before rounding on Santana. Her face hardens into a scowl, and she folds her arms over the bosom of her pinafore. She sets into a mean stance.

"So how long were you planning to keep it a secret?"

Immediately, Santana's heart leaps into her throat, beating faster than a steam engine can ride its tracks and twice as loudly, she's sure. Santana doesn't know precisely what secret Ma means—she has so many nowadays—but she feels a preemptive guilt for whatever it is anyhow.

Does Ma want Santana to tell the truth about her false marriage to Puck? Or has Ma somehow learned about Santana's curse? Did she catch Santana skiving chores this morning? Has it happened that Ma somehow knows something about Santana that Santana doesn't know about herself?

(If anything scares Santana more than fire, it's that notion.)

"I—," Santana stutters.

Ma Jones is not a patient woman. She huffs at Santana. "Finn Hudson tells me that you can read," she reveals. Though what Ma says doesn't sound like a question, it is one.

It isn't what Santana expected Ma Jones to say to her at all.

"I—," Santana starts again but then closes her mouth. Suddenly, she very much regrets disclosing her literacy to Finn. Folks like Ma Jones don't seem to like the idea of Santana reading. Will Ma punish Santana for breaking the rules? Santana falters, a fish gumming a hook. She oughtn't to lie, even though she very much wants to. "Yes, I can read," she manages after a second.

At Santana's confirmation, Ma Jones smiles, not happily but rather as if she's just discovered a helpful shortcut on her way to somewhere important. She nods, pleased. "Good," she says. "Can y'all write, too?"

The question catches Santana by surprise. She doesn't know why Ma Jones seems so interested in her education, all of a sudden, but she thinks back to the first time she met Ma Jones and remembers how much she wanted Ma to like her and once again feels compelled to answer Ma's query truthfully.

"I can," she affirms.

Ma seems even more pleased than before.

"All right," she says. "Mrs. Schuester and her girls have laundry to do, so they ain't in the dressing tent. While they're gone, Mrs. Schuester and I want you to go in there and do some inventory. Mr. Adams wants to debut the knight sketch in Cherokee tomorrow, but before he can, we need to make sure that we have enough knight costumes to fit all the fellas. You can make your lazy self a stitch useful by counting them all up and taking note of what sizes we have, as long as you can do it without raising tarnation all up inside that tent."

She eyeballs Santana as one would a measure meant for a recipe. There's something queer behind her expression—the same scrutiny as usual but also something almost angry. In the next instant, Ma produces a small ledger and pencil from the pocket of her apron. The ledger appears quite like the one Santana found hanging from the shower stall earlier in the day. Ma passes the items to Santana, who accepts them, bleary.

"Do I have to take the inventory all by myself?" Santana asks, not out of laziness but because she honestly wonders how Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester can expect her to sort through so many dozens of costumes just on her own before the evening fair.

Ma Jones opens her mouth to answer but doesn't get the chance to do so before someone else interjects into the conversation.

"I'll help you," says a cheerful voice just behind Santana.

Santana knows who it is right away and grins before she can help herself from doing it.

Brittany appears beside Santana as if from the ether like one of Shakespeare's forest folk, already changed from her circus costume back into her tatty dress of lonesome morning blue. She wears a smile that resides just as much in her eyes as it does on her face and steps up right beside Santana, so close that they stand almost hip to hip. So near is their proximity to each other that Santana feels the June heat warm on Brittany's skin.

"You want to help her?" Ma Jones asks incredulously.

Brittany nods. "More than Methuselah wants Deborah to quit henpecking," she says.

Ma Jones quirks an eyebrow, bemused at Brittany's turn of phrase, though she chooses not to question it. "Do you even know what she's doing?" she asks, as if Brittany might change her mind about helping Santana if she learns the nature of Santana's chores.

"Nope," Brittany replies, grinning widening.

Ma passes a wary look between Brittany and Santana, as if she can't imagine an unlikelier pair of workers. She furrows her brow, searching them for some kind of explanation. If she finds what she's looking for, Santana can't tell. After a second, Ma's face hardens back to its default scowl. She doesn't bother to explain Santana's task to Brittany.

(Apparently, she has decided that Santana and Brittany are a perfectly hopeless cause.)

"Well, all right," she consents. "But you two best not get up to any mischief."

Santana senses that Ma Jones would like to add a threat to the end of her admonishment but can't, due to the rules. Instead, Ma simply shakes her head as she goes. Vaguely, it occurs to Santana that even though Ma Jones has known Brittany for far longer than Santana has, Santana somehow knows Brittany better than Ma does. Santana sneaks a glance at Brittany from the side and finds Brittany grinning like she has a piece of candy tucked against her tongue behind her teeth.

"You really have no idea what she told me to do, do you?" Santana asks, something warm and wonderful blooming in her chest now that she and Brittany find themselves alone again.

"Not even a little bit," Brittany affirms.

Santana smiles. "She could have just told me to clean up the elephant pen, for all you know," she kids.

"Well, then you definitely would have needed my help," Brittany replies. "I would have had to lower you down over the fence by a string."

Even though Brittany sounds serious, her little teasing smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. Both she and Santana laugh.

(Santana has grown to adore Brittany's brilliant flat jokes that don't seem like jokes until you can see them from behind—amongst so many other Brittany things.)

"I'm going to take inventory of the knights' costumes that we sewed the other day," Santana clarifies, suddenly feeling more light and lively inside than she has all day. She holds her ledger and pencil in one hand and extends the other to Brittany, offering up her pinky finger, which Brittany gladly accepts. The touch seems like a victory, someway.

(It's not quite a kiss, but it is a start.)

"Okay," Brittany says simply.

Somehow, Santana gets the feeling that Brittany would go with her to anywhere at all.

* * *

><p>The dressing tent is different without all of Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses inside it—quieter and almost like a still-life portrait, moth-white with sunlight pouring through its thin sod cloth roof, casting shadows at odd angles over the silent trunks and dressing partitions.<p>

At first, Santana feels reverent stepping into such a large and empty space, but then a sense of excitement takes hold of her as she considers the possibilities present in the openness.

Brittany's pinky finger slips out from against Santana's, and Santana flinches at the sudden loss of contact. When she looks to see why Brittany let her go, she finds Brittany grinning at her, eyes alight with wiliness.

It seems as if they've all of a sudden stepped into a children's game, where everything feels both perfectly silly but also entirely important at once.

"Don't move, darlin'. And don't peek," Brittany warns, motioning for Santana to stay put.

"Okay," Santana promises.

(Whatever Brittany wants.)

Brittany smiles, pleased at Santana's response, and quickly ducks around her, disappearing to somewhere that Santana has pledged to not look. Santana hears skittering and then a hollow, wooden groan from a crate. Fabric rustles under Brittany's hands.

"Britt—," Santana starts, but then Brittany interjects.

"Hold on just a second," she says, amused at Santana's impatience.

Eventually, Santana feels Brittany's hand tapping at her shoulder.

"You can turn around now," Brittany says, and Santana does. Brittany holds up an offering to Santana. "For you, my lady," she says in her fake proper accent.

The first things Santana sees are false flowers: silk blossoms in rainbow red, blue, orange, yellow, and violet. The second thing Santana sees is Brittany, who bows to Santana as deeply as a fine Dickensian gentleman might bow to his superior and then grins at her, still bent at the waist. Brittany lifts the flowers to Santana, enticing her to take them.

"Brittany!" Santana squeaks, covering her mouth with her hands.

She feels a swell inside her chest and wonders how Brittany always knows just the thing to do. A blush blooms over her cheeks and at the back of her neck, and she laughs at the giddy, reckless sensation in her stomach.

Brittany teases Santana for her hesitation.

"Do you not like them?" Brittany asks, checking the bouquet for duds before extending it to Santana again. "I know they're only stage flowers, darlin', but they're the best I could get on short notice."

Santana bites her lips into her mouth. "They're perfect," she says shyly, her voice smaller than it usually would be.

(She really means something else.)

Brittany straightens to her full height, pleased with Santana's assessment. "Very well, my lady," Brittany says, her eyes still locked on Santana's face like she can't quite ever see it either often or well enough.

"If you're going to go around giving flowers to ladies, you need a hat to tip," Santana informs her.

Brittany gasps. "You're right!" she says, aghast at her oversight.

She glances over to the open trunk from which she procured the silk bouquet, and Santana follows her gaze; the label on the side of the trunk reads CLOWN PROPS, MISC.

"Stay right there, darlin'," Brittany says. "This'll just take a jiff."

Brittany skip-steps over to the trunk and kneels before it, sticking her arms inside up to her elbows. Santana then watches with delight as Brittany ransacks the trunk's contents, pulling out a stadium horn here, a curly wig there, and setting them to the ground beside her. On her fourth pull, Brittany rescues what looks like a white tablecloth from the jumble.

"Oh, look!" Brittany says excitedly, turning to face Santana. "I found just the thing for you!"

"For me?" Santana repeats, not quite sure what it is that Brittany has found or how it bespeaks her own person in any particular way but terribly curious to know whatever Brittany has in mind anyhow.

"Mhm," Brittany says, gesturing Santana over to her. "It's from the old Tony & Cleo sketch." When Santana gets close to Brittany, Brittany stands. "Hold out your arms, darlin'," she says, and Santana laughs but does as Brittany tells her to do all the same.

Using the greatest care and concentration, Brittany drapes the sheet over Santana's shoulder at an angle and then bunches it at Santana's waist, threading the fabric through Santana's belt to make it stay. She has never stood so close to Santana before as she does now, not even when she hung in front of her on the ladder or when they kissed yesterday and today.

The nearness of her body stokes something in Santana's skin, and when Brittany's fingers press into the soft flesh at Santana's hips and belly as Brittany goes about adjusting the sheet on her, it stokes something even deeper inside Santana still. Santana aches to feel Brittany closer yet than she does now.

The breath Santana draws must be audible because Brittany offers her a guilty look. "I don't mean to pinch you, darlin'," she says.

"You didn't," Santana quickly assures.

After fussing some more over the arrangement of the sheet, Brittany finally seems satisfied with her work. "There," she says succinctly.

"There what?"

"Now you're Cleopatra," Brittany answers glibly, her eyes flitting here and there over Santana's shoulders and belt and always, always back to her face, even though the addition of the mock toga hasn't changed that part of Santana at all.

"And what does that make you?" Santana counters. "You still need a hat."

Brittany grins and bows again. "Of course, your highness," she says in her funny accent, and, with her next motion, she reaches into the trunk and produces the most unattractive hat that Santana has ever seen, flipping it jauntily onto her head.

At one point in its lifetime, the hat may have adorned the head of someone attending a garden party, Santana supposes—though, considering the hat's color, Santana can't imagine who might venture to wear such a thing.

The hat is an unavoidable shade of amaranth, loud in its hue and with silken flowers cascading from its crown to its brim, each one a different shade of indefinite violet or mauve. Every individual silken flower manages not only to clash with the color of the hat itself but also with its neighboring flowers, creating for a truly impressive dissonance with the hat on the whole.

In addition to the faults by which it comes naturally, the hat has also been crushed, to the point where its cap lumps over its brim rather than overlooks it.

Santana strongly suspects that someone sat on the thing before putting it away with the other props in the trunk—though whether the person did so before or after tying the hat's tassels into a sloppy braid, she can't say.

Brittany wears the hat most bravely, striking a pose as soon as she has the eyesore on her head.

Santana can't help it: she laughs loudly. "Brittany!" she splutters, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle the sound. As soon as she laughs, Brittany does, too. Santana can't imagine that either one of them has ever seen anything droller in their lives.

Brittany bows to Santana again, but this time she tips her hat, as well. "Now I'm a dandy," she announces.

Santana laughs. "Well, I think you're a scoundrel," she teases.

"Scoundrels don't give silk flowers to Cleopatra," Brittany notes.

Santana laughs and laughs, and Brittany does too, less because of Brittany's joke than because, because, because.

* * *

><p>Within the next half hour, Brittany and Santana manage to unearth all sorts of silly accessories for each other to wear.<p>

With all said and done, Brittany dons not only her silly flowered hat but also a leather holster vest from the cowboy trunk with a false pistol on either side of it and a dumpling-sized ring set with a glass "ruby" set on the band. Along with all her other props, she carries a fool's scepter with a cockscomb on the tip. She looks like the most regal monarch of one of Mr. Carroll's nonsensical nations.

For her part, Santana sports a floppy brown Boss of the Plains hat, her toga, and dainty velvet gloves.

Both girls have laughed so hard that their stomachs hurt from it.

Santana doesn't know that she has ever felt quite so happy in her life.

When she realizes the awesomeness of the mess that she and Brittany have made in rifling through the trunks and chasing each other around with this abhorrent piece of costume and that, trying to pin each other with the most outrageous clothes, she rolls her eyes at herself.

"Mrs. Schuester will skin us alive," she says.

If Brittany feels guilty, she certainly doesn't show it. "We'll just tell her that it was a twister," she says wryly. She looks almost proud of the chaos that she and Santana have created together.

Santana laughs but still feels worried.

"How are we supposed to clean all this up and finish the inventory before show time?" she groans.

Brittany reaches out and brushes her fingertips along Santana's wrist. "Don't worry, darlin'," she says calmly. "I'll clean up the props, and you can start on the knights' costumes. Once I finish up, I'll come over here and help you count. I know where all the props go, so I can be quick."

(And suddenly Santana has a thousand and one more reasons to adore Brittany than even she did before.)

"Okay," Santana says in that same small voice that seems reserved solely for Brittany.

"Okay," Brittany repeats, shushing her fingers over Santana's skin before she pulls away.

She makes a move toward the mess, and Santana instantly misses her.

"Brittany!" Santana exclaims, reaching out to grab Brittany and catching her at the wrist. Brittany stares at Santana with her inimitable eyes, her expression deep and waiting. Santana draws a breath, not quite sure how to ask for what she wants. "Can I...? Would it be okay if...?" She sighs, "Just... thank you."

(She had wanted to say something else.)

(She carries a wonderful, hopeful ache, inside her chest, and how can she explain it?)

(Sometimes words are just so small.)

Brittany's smile changes, becoming smaller but warmer, the way the flame inside a paraffin lamp will do so when one turns down oil. Brittany stares deeply into Santana's eyes and doesn't flinch away at what she seems to find there.

"You're welcome, darlin'," she says sweetly and in such a way that Santana somehow feels that something important has happened.

(Sometimes words aren't small at all.)

* * *

><p>It turns out that Santana and Brittany can work very effectively together, once they set out to accomplish a task.<p>

After they remove their borrowed accessories, Santana empties one half-dozen costume crates of their contents and sorts each tunic according to size. In the meanwhile, Brittany manages to clear all the cowboy, medieval, European, clown, and frontier props from the dressing tent floor and deposit them back in their appropriate places, humming to herself as she works. Having completed her objective, slamming the last trunk closed with a flourish, Brittany joins Santana amidst the stacks of knights' tunics and counts through each pile while Santana marks tallies in the ledger.

All in all, they sort through thirty-three small tunics, forty-two midsized tunics, and thirty-six large sized tunics in less than one half-hour, taking careful note of each of them before folding them back into their crates, separated according to their sizes. Santana writes the contents of the various crates on their lids, scratching lead into the wood grain: Knight S., Knight M., and Knight L.

Brittany watches each stoke of Santana's wrist, as reverent and interested as a student at the salon would be while observing a master painter. She wears a querying look, her brow tight with concentration, lips parted slightly, and leans in so closely to Santana that Santana feels Brittany's breaths upon her arm.

"You're so careful," Brittany whispers.

It's the kind of compliment that only someone who pays close attention can give.

(The best kinds of compliments are the ones we didn't know were true but are.)

After Santana finishes labeling the last crate, she and Brittany stack the lot of them against a dressing partition and survey their work. The dressing tent bears no sign of their first mischief; all of the trunks and crates sit sorted to regulation file, the ground clear and the changing partitions all in line.

Santana smiles, pleased with her and Brittany's work. She turns to see Brittany's reaction and finds Brittany staring at her in that same inexhaustible way that she did upon their first meeting at the trisection of tents. When Santana meets her eyes, Brittany smiles but also looks very suddenly regretful.

"I have to go," Brittany says.

"To where?" Santana asks. "Where do you always disappear to all the time?"

She latches onto Brittany's pinky finger, holding Brittany fast. They have at least one half-hour, if not longer, before the evening fair; Santana wonders why they can't spend it together now that they've finished their chores.

An expression Santana can't read passes over Brittany's face, and Brittany draws a deep breath.

"It's a secret," she says, "but I promise that if you can just be patient, I'll tell you the secret someday soon. Can you wait?"

It's difficult to make a promise without knowing what that promise means, but Santana nods anyway. She feels like, with Brittany, she can keep her promises, simply for wanting to keep them so much.

"I can," Santana says, and Brittany grins at Santana like she's just given her a gift.

* * *

><p>Santana dances better at the evening show than she has ever danced before, still caught up in the giddiness of her afternoon with Brittany. She holds her tambourine high against the stage light and swirls her skirts like clouds rumbling into storm. Puck smiles at Santana from across the ring and meets her with eager, thirsty eyes. She claps and finds the sweet pit of the music, drawing it out, relishing it. When the gypsy act ends, the audience applauds in a sudden deluge burst, putting thunder upon thunder.<p>

Santana watches the remainder of the show through the aperture at the side of the backstage, little children huddled around her skirts. She wonders, briefly, why none of the other adult performers bother to take in the acts like she does.

(Even if she were to travel with the circus for a thousand years, Santana doesn't think that she would ever tire of seeing the shows.)

Rachel Berry performs a sterling aria, her voice as high and clear as the loftiest part of the stratosphere, and her wine goblet shatters right on cue to the amazed applause of the audience. When Rachel bows, she doesn't seem quite as sad as she usually does. She smiles kindly and curtsies to the crowd.

As Rachel exits the ring and Will announces the knife throwing act, Santana holds her breath, waiting for Brittany to appear from the wings. It seems to take forever for the supes to set the stage and arrange the target.

When the lights finally go up, Santana laughs out loud, her hands springing up to cover her mouth, for there, in the center of the ring, stands Brittany, the flowered hat from the dressing tent sitting jaunty on her head.

Reckless happiness floods Santana's chest, and she finds herself applauding and cheering more loudly than any patron under the big top. Just as she supposes that neither the moment nor Brittany could be any more perfect than they already are, Brittany turns toward the back of the tent and winks to the darkness.

Winks to Santana.

Santana's heart skips three beats and lands running.

(The best kinds of gifts are those we receive without knowing that we had needed them.)

* * *

><p>After the show, Santana helps Puck and Rachel gather up the gypsy gear and take it back to the residential camp, still feels dizzy with sheer delight, all for Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.<p>

"You know, Santana," Rachel starts as the gypsies trek past the sideshow tent toward the midway. The sky tinges dusky purple overhead. "You really have improved in your theatricality, and one day you might actually develop a respectable stage presence, given the proper tutelage from someone who understands what it truly means to perform."

Of course, Rachel means herself—she almost always does—but Santana decides to play the fool.

"I'll have to ask Brittany, then," she says smugly.

Puck guffaws and Rachel's jaw drops.

Santana walks faster, keeping her head down so that Rachel won't detect her wicked smile.

* * *

><p>When Santana and Puck arrive at the mess pit for supper, Santana scans the crowd, looking for Brittany, as has become her habit whenever the company assembles. Like usual, she finds no sign of Brittany anywhere—just all the other circus folk congregated under the vast expanse of the evening sky, watching as bats take skitter-winged flight into the dark firmament from the trees.<p>

Santana maintains a small hope that Brittany will arrive late to the meal but also holds onto Brittany's promise that someday she'll know to where it is that Brittany so regularly disappears and won't have to wonder about the matter either often or long at all.

Santana remembers everything about the day she and Brittany spent together and feels grateful for it in more ways than she can count.

She eats quietly, wearing a private smile, caught up in silly hats and not-a-scoundrels and the simple wonder that Brittany wanted to help her take inventory at all.

"Hey, hey! What's this?"

A voice cuts through her reverie, drawing her out of this afternoon and into the inevitable present.

Santana looks to see Rachel's father, Mr. Berry, striding into the mess pit area, a cup of coffee in one hand, a folded newspaper in the other.

He sounds very different in camp than he does entertaining his patrons on the midway, less mysterious and more wry and laconic. His accent is much subtler during these leisure hours than it is during his act. Moreover, he has changed out of his show clothes. He no longer comes clad in his handsome frock coat or sporting a gold watch chain. Instead, he wears just a simple gray waistcoat and sleeves, much like what Santana's father used to wear around the bachelor cottage in the evenings after supper.

"Listen, listen," Mr. Berry says in a very familiar way, as if he speaks to a single person, though he obviously addresses the whole of the camp, gesturing for everyone to gather round him. "I just had this delivered in from town. It's the evening gazette."

A large part of the company heeds Mr. Berry's call, crowding in close to him. Santana and Puck stay at their bench, able to hear well enough from where they sit without having to see everything, too.

Mr. Berry clears his throat and begins to read:

_"'We regret to report the untimely passing of one Mr. Benjamin R. Hammond, heir to the Hammond estate fortune, who met his demise in an afternoon buggy accident, on this the twenty-eighth day of June, in the year of our Lord 1898. Witnesses report that the buggy overran itself and turned upon its carriage, killing the driver and injuring the passenger upon impact._

_Mr. Hammond is survived by his fiancée, Miss E. Rebecca Calhoun, daughter of the Reverend Ezra Calhoun and his wife Beatrice, of Butterfield. Miss Calhoun rode with Mr. Hammond in his buggy at the time of the accident and suffered a broken leg when the buggy carriage landed upon her._

_Certain friends of Mr. Hammond report that the prescient Madame Rossetti of J.P Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie accurately predicted Mr. Hammond's death just hours before it occurred when he attended the circus with his intended._

_Mr. Hammond leaves behind a fortune estimated at over one million dollars and had not named an heir to his estate at the time of his death. Details on his funeral and the division of his properties forthcoming.'"_

Santana drops her spoon against her metal plate and stills where she sits, motionless as the rabbit a hawk hunts from overhead. Her insides twist, jackknifed. She can't believe what Mr. Berry just read, though she can also believe it all too well.

The young gentleman died.

The young gentleman whose cards she read.

At first, the company stays still along with Santana, looking between her and Mr. Berry, processing the connection between the prescient Madame Rossetti from the newspaper article and the little nigger Santana called Puckerman sitting on a camp bench just beside them all, letting her black-eyed peas turn cold. Only after several seconds do the whispers start: a low hiss picks up somewhere near the back of the throng and slithers forward like sparks along a lighted fuse, escalating into a full murmur.

"The gypsy girl said he'd die?"

"She predicted it!"

"She dealt the Death card to Mr. Fabray, too."

"He'd best watch his shadow so no one follows him home."

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't remember leaving the mess area, though she does remember pushing Puck's hand off her shoulder and apologizing to him for the tarot reading, as if he had known Mr. Hammond somehow and cared about the death personally.<p>

She feels just as silly and melodramatic as Mr. Collins' Magdalen Vanstone, storming out of camp as often as she has since she first arrived at the circus, but since she honestly can't stand to hear what the company has to say about her now, she knows she must get herself away from them, even if it makes her a fool for doing so. She rubs and rubs her hands together until her palms pulse, sore, only vaguely aware of to where she goes, the mess pit noise fading away in the distance.

Though she would think of anything else given the choice, all Santana can imagine is herself laying the Death card for Mr. Hammond again and again and again until she can doing nothing but hate herself for giving the reading, hate her grandmother for teaching her to read, and hate Mr. Hammond and Mr. Adams and everyone who ever thought it would be wise for her to play at the arcane as though it were a children's game. It might be better if Mr. Adams fired Santana so that she would never again have to read her cards! She almost wishes that he would send her away.

"Santana!"

It shouldn't surprise her when Brittany calls her name, as Brittany seems given to finding her whenever the worst happens, but somehow it does surprise her, and she starts.

She doesn't see from whence Brittany appears—she only feels it when Brittany sets a hand on her arm, scampering to catch up with her from only a pace behind. Brittany slows Santana almost to a stop, her hand sliding down to find Santana's until she can tangle their pinky fingers together.

"Santana," she says, "Santana, wait."

Though Santana can hardly see Brittany through the shadows, she can still sense the shortness of Brittany's breath; Brittany obviously ran from somewhere far away to catch up to her.

"Come on," Brittany says, wheeling Santana in a different direction than the one in which Santana had intended to go, pulling Santana into the deepest shadows behind a long, rectangular tent with a utility Santana has yet to learn.

They're now on the far northwestern side of camp—a place Santana had never visited until tonight, and especially not under the dark of night. She can't see Brittany's face anymore, only hear Brittany's motions and feel Brittany's summer heat.

As soon as they step into the darkness, the levee inside Santana breaks. Tears spring to her eyes, and her chest flutters with an awful kind of nervousness that has nothing to do but fret and wonder and regret everything, now that what's done is done. "I killed the millionaire," she babbles. "I killed him. I drew him Death, and now he's died."

"You didn't kill anyone, Santana," Brittany says immediately.

Even her surety can't calm Santana tonight, though. "But Brittany," Santana says, voice on the verge of a break, "I'm cursed. I have a curse. When I draw the cards, I deal Death and when I deal Death—"

"—the person you're reading for dies," Brittany supplies, stopping Santana short. Brittany steps closer to Santana and presses her fingertips to Santana's jaw in the darkness. The two girls see nothing of each other, but Santana feels warmth ebb between them on the cycle of their heavy breathing. "Cards are just cards, Santana—," Brittany starts.

It's the same thing Santana's father told her before she read for him.

(She feels a pang of something deeper than loss cut through her, jagged and aching.)

"Brittany, I—," Santana tries to explain, but Brittany talks over the objection, determined to finish her thought.

"—and that millionaire died because he drove his horses too fast wanting to impress his ladylove, not because of anything you did."

Brittany pauses, and Santana hears her wet her lips in preparation to continue. When next Brittany speaks, her voice sounds sure, without any halts in it.

Just so.

"Santana, we make our own choices, not cards. But even if we didn't, why would it matter at all? Everything would just happen how it was supposed to happen. Little old you couldn't change a thing any more than little old me or Mr. Adams or Ma Jones or anybody else could, either. Cards would still just be cards."

The tears in Santana's eyes start to fall more in earnest, tracing hot tracks down her cheeks. Her jaw quivers against Brittany's touch, though she would still it. She wants to explain about the gardener, about her grandmother, and about her father, but the hurt inside her runs too deep; some knife in her throat prevents her from speaking.

If Brittany knew what Santana was, she wouldn't treat Santana so kindly. Santana tries to explain, at least a little, as much as she can around the ache in her chest and the bitterness in her mouth because she feels she must.

(She could never lie to Brittany.)

"I'm _la malagüera_," Santana chokes.

It isn't exactly what Santana wanted to say, and she knows that Brittany doesn't understand what the word means. Though Santana can't see Brittany's face through the darkness, she can imagine it: Brittany's brow scrunching together, her eyes turning deep with her questions. Brittany thumbs at Santana's jaw and waits, trusting Santana to explain, and so Santana does.

"I'm a bad omen," she says mournfully. "The very first card I ever dealt was Death, and I've dealt the Death card every time I've read after that. I read for our gardener, and the next day the Park Avenue streetcar hit him. At first, Abuela said it was just bad luck, but I didn't believe her, so she told me to read for her, _no se preocupe, Santana_. When I drew the Death card for her, she looked at me like she hadn't ever seen me before, and she prayed to her saints and told me that it was true: that I am the bad omen. On her deathbed, she kept telling my father _La niña está maldita, y la niña es la malagüera_ over and over and over again." Her voice breaks into a sob, "She wouldn't even kiss me goodbye or let me in her room. I didn't want to go to her funeral because I knew she—but Papa made me go and—"

She can't go on.

Santana expects Brittany to say something—maybe to say again that these happenings aren't Santana's fault, maybe to finally hate Santana as she ought to—but Brittany never does quite what Santana expects.

Brittany embraces her.

She pulls Santana in so that their bodies press flush together, summer warmth meeting summer warmth, Santana still trembling, Brittany sure. Santana's chin nudges over Brittany's shoulder, and their cheeks brush as Brittany's arms enfold Santana, buoying Santana up.

Santana almost wants to flinch away because she knows she doesn't deserve such kindness. It's almost like Brittany didn't hear what Santana said about how her own grandmother died hating her at all. It's almost like Brittany doesn't realize the one million reasons why she ought to hate Santana and turn Santana away and not hold Santana or call Santana friend or treat Santana so well all the time.

Someone like Santana could never deserve someone like Brittany.

(A fresh sob breaks Santana's throat.)

But Santana never has successfully kept herself from wanting what she ought not to have.

(She aches and aches with wanting until she can't stand it anymore.)

Instead of pulling away from Brittany, Santana sinks further into her, her arms reaching up to wrap around Brittany's body and hold her fast. She hides her face in Brittany's hair and shakes and shakes, her heartbeat heavy in her skin and her breaths jagged as she cries.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry."

"Shh," Brittany whispers, threading her fingers through Santana's hair. "You're all right, darlin'. You're just fine, you're fine."

* * *

><p>They stay that way for a long time—so close together that Santana can almost taste the wind in Brittany's hair and hear Brittany's pulse where Santana's ear presses against Brittany's shoulder. No one has held Santana either for this long or so tightly since she was a very small child. Santana finds the contact soothing in a way that her bones and blood understand better than does her mind does.<p>

Gradually, Santana ceases to cry. Gradually, her breathing evens out. Gradually, she sinks into Brittany, softening to her. Only after Santana releases a deep sigh does Brittany dare to speak again.

"You're not a bad omen," Brittany says. "You can't be a bad omen—not when so many good things happen whenever I'm with you."

She squeezes Santana tightly, and Santana closes her eyes, thriving in the contact but also longing for more of it, wanting to feel Brittany even more closely than she feels her now, wishing that somehow they could sink into each other and stay that way for forever and a day.

Santana draws a deep breath, taking in the wind-and-campfire-and-apples-and-bright-bright scent of Brittany's hair. Their ribs fit together like puzzle pieces.

"Thank you," Santana breathes, hardly loud enough for Brittany to hear her.

"I'd let you read my cards, you know," Brittany mumbles. "If you wanted that, I'd let you do it, just to prove to you that the cards don't mean anything at all."

"I know you would," Santana says, trusting Brittany's earnestness.

(Brittany gives Santana gifts at every turn.)

"You're all right, darlin'," Brittany says, and it's not a question, and it's not just because Santana has stopped crying.

The girls slowly retract from each other, their hands slipping back down to find each other's pinky fingers. Santana wipes tears from her cheeks, grazing them away with her fingernail. She sniffs and gives a small chuckle, suddenly feeling both very foolish for having cried so much and very grateful to Brittany for not disparaging her for doing so.

"Come on," Brittany says, giving Santana's pinky finger a tug and leading Santana out from the shadow of the tent, back into the star and moonlight so that they can finally see each other again.

Instead of taking Santana back to camp, Brittany leads Santana further west of it, traversing the white city's furthest boundary until she and Santana start to descend a slight hill overlooking the same low lake that Santana saw when the circus first made its way into town. The moon hangs fat over the horizon, not quite full but nearly so, and very bright. Brittany stops them just after they pass the hill's crest.

"Can we sit?" Brittany asks, and Santana nods.

The two girls settle into the grass, arranging their skirts around them. Santana's face feels tight from crying, but her sadness seems far away with Brittany still so close. It amazes her that Brittany doesn't believe in her curse, even with all the evidence to the contrary. It amazes her even more that Brittany associates her with good things.

Santana feels thankful past her bones for Brittany and longs to always please Brittany, if she can.

Brittany takes Santana's hands into her lap and begins smoothing over them with her thumbs, drawing little circles here and there, before Santana had even realized she'd wanted Brittany to do it.

"Hey," Brittany says, breaking the quiet.

"Hey," Santana says back in her same little Brittany-voice.

"Did you get any supper?" Brittany asks.

"A bit," Santana says. "Did you get any supper?"

"A bit," Brittany says back.

For a long while after that, the girls sit without speaking, an orchestra of insects playing up from the grass. Brittany kneads at the joints between Santana's fingers and works over Santana's knuckles. She finds the scar on Santana's palm from where Santana once dropped a knife at tea time and caught it on impulse, blade first, before it hit the ground. Brittany smoothes over the scar once, twice, three times, memorizing its topography by touch. Whenever she doesn't stare at Santana's face, she glances up toward the sky.

"Did you find the North Star?" Santana asks because Brittany faces north and because Santana just wants to hear Brittany speak and say anything at all.

"I found a tiger hunting crickets in the grass," Brittany says.

"What?"

Santana turns to look at what Brittany means, fearful for an instant that perhaps one of Jesse St. James' big cats escaped its pen, just like the spotted ass did earlier in the day.

Of course, it isn't a tiger—not a real one.

Brittany points toward the sky, gesturing to a cluster of stars and tracing a shape. "It looks like one of the tigers when it gets bored in its cage and starts hunting bugs," she says matter-of-factly. "See? There are his shoulders and his tail, and all those little stars right there are the crickets. He's about to pounce."

Santana laughs, drawing a hand up to her mouth again. Her heart swells and then almost collapses on itself; she has never heard anything so perfectly wonderful in her life. Her other hand remains in Brittany's lap. She and Brittany sit hip by hip.

"Run, little bugs! Run!" Brittany says in a silly voice, and Santana doubles over giggling.

"Brittany!" she shrieks, feeling so, so sweet on Brittany that she doesn't know what to do.

"That one looks like a lady with a bustle wearing a flower pot on her head," Brittany goes on. "And that one looks like somebody blowing a cloud of dust out of a bullhorn."

Brittany leans back on her elbows, smirking as Santana laughs, pleased with herself for causing Santana such mirth. She won't look at Santana directly but pays attention to Santana in every other way. Something warm and light passes between the two girls, and suddenly Santana can hardly believe that she only stopped crying just a short while ago.

Santana puts on a smirk of her own. "I don't know," she says slyly. "I think it looks more like a Christmas cracker."

That gets Brittany to look at her. She pulls a face. "You're crazy, Santana," she says sweetly.

"You're crazier," Santana returns, sweeter and sweeter still.

They paint the sky in absurdities—in birds driving Sunday buggies and in ponies wearing pompadours—until they both feel lightheaded from laughing and like their thoughts have turned to liquid and their hours into always. They lie side by side in the grass, their pinky fingers linked between them, the gaps in their conversation growing longer the sleepier they become.

Santana's chest feels tight, almost like the sensation that started growing inside it when she first met Brittany has become so large that it can no longer contain it. Her cheeks ache from smiling so much but only in the most wonderful way. She knows that if she stays lying down for another minute, she'll slip away into dreaming, sated on Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

"We should get back to camp," she mumbles.

"Sure thing, darlin'," Brittany agrees.

Neither one of them moves.

* * *

><p>(Just before she falls to sleep, Santana curls into Brittany, head resting on her shoulder.)<p>

(Home.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I dedicate this chapter to my dear friend Sadie in honor of her birthday. She is one of the most awesome humans I know.<strong>

**I also would like to thank my flawless beta Han for getting me through this sucker. She is the best, the best, the best. Everyone should check out her story i80w at her tumblr socallmedaisy, okay? #brotp: with the u and everything**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**la querida de su abuelita : **_**(roughly) **_**her grandmother's little sweetheart**_

_**ángel custodio : guardian angel**_

_**La niña sin bautizar : The girl is without baptism **_

_**Ella está sin la bendición : She is unblessed**_

_**el Príncipe de las Monedas : the Prince of Coins**_

_**La niña tiene una maldición : The Girl has a curse**_

_**la malagüera : the evil omen**_

_**no se preocupe, Santana : don't worry about it, Santana**_

_**La niña está maldita, y la niña es la malagüera : The Girl is damned, and the girl is an evil omen**_

* * *

><p><strong>Latin translation:<strong>

**Those lines come from the poem "Carmen 71" ****by the Roman poet Catullus. Santana is right—the recitation is very dirty. I'll allow you to look up the translation, per your discretion.**


	6. Devil Gonna Follow Me Wher'er I Go

**Chapter 5: Devil Gonna Follow Me Wher'er I Go**

**Wednesday, June 29th, 1898: Cherokee, Iowa**

Santana awakens to stirring and a whisper, "Hey, Santana, it's time to wake up." Fingertips traipse through her hair, starting at her scalp and easing between the tresses in long, slow rakes. Santana curls into the touch, adoring it, nestling against it where she can.

Her first thought is that she would like to stay where she is forever, and her second thought is to wonder what she had been dreaming about before. She wakes because she wonders, opening her eyes a peek to find herself in darkness, resting against something that breathes and beats with a soft clockwork heart.

Brittany.

Santana looks up from where her face rests on Brittany's shoulder to find Brittany watching her, smiling through the early morning gloom.

"Hey, darlin' girl," Brittany says softly.

When Brittany speaks, she does so in a hushed voice, like she doesn't actually want to rouse Santana, despite what she says in words. She wears a wise expression and follows Santana's little waking motions perfectly with her gaze, familiar with Santana in a way one can only be familiar from careful observation and learning.

Santana breathes in Brittany, who smells like sleep even though she's awake, like she just came from some great dream. Santana wants to sink into Brittany and her scent always. She also can't stop staring at Brittany for the life of her.

If Santana had thought Brittany beautiful in daylight and at nighttime, she had neglected to consider the potential for Brittany's beauty in the hours before sunrise, when everything about Brittany breathes of lonesome blue. Brittany's eyes are wishing-well deep in the dark but also remarkably clear.

(How long ago did Brittany wake?)

When Santana makes no moves to rise, Brittany rubs a thumb along her jaw, teasing her awake. "Santana," she says in mock admonishment. She tries to fix Santana with a disapproving look, but her giggling gives her away. Her whole face turns sunlight sweet, and Santana wonders that more authors don't write about people like Brittany in books—about persons who are perfectly agreeable in every imaginable circumstance.

Santana lifts her eyes to Brittany, smiling before their gazes even meet, and Brittany smoothes a hair strand away from Santana's face, absentminded. The two girls stare at each other, accustoming themselves to waking and also to waking with each other.

Santana's left arm tucks around Brittany's waist, and her head rests on Brittany's collarbone. Santana wonders for how long she and Brittany have lain wrapped up like this. Her mind blears with old dreams and new alertness, and, all at once, she realizes where she is and what she is doing. In a trice, she retracts her arm from around Brittany, embarrassed at the slip up.

(Rules.)

Brittany doesn't seem to mind the impropriety. She still watches Santana, eternally curious. There isn't a hint of resentment or discomfort in her expression. Santana relaxes. Strange how someone rapt in blue can breathe so much warmth.

"G'morning," Santana says, smiling her Brittany-smile, happier upon waking than she has ever been before. Though she feels cheerful, her voice comes out as a croak, still scratchy from sleep. She blinks her eyes a dozen times as she tries to disperse her dream cobwebs and clears her throat before speaking again. "I'm sorry I fell asleep on you," she says.

"Don't be sorry," Brittany tells her. "I fell asleep on you, too."

She reaches for the hand Santana just removed from her and tangles her fingers with Santana's fingers, twining them up in her lap like it's no big thing but also somehow the biggest thing in the world. Suddenly Santana feels entirely awake, the lucky penny feeling in her belly flipping over and over and over.

"What time is it?" Santana asks, stretching her shoulders a bit and shifting so that she can better see Brittany's face.

Brittany's expression blanks. "Late," she says seriously.

For a second, Santana panics, but then she realizes that Brittany has fooled her again. Santana laughs, delighted that Brittany can crack jokes at such an early hour.

Except.

Brittany's mouth doesn't shift to her usual jocund smile. Rather, Brittany's expression remains somber. Brittany peers back over her shoulder, up the hill upon which she and Santana recline. Her eyes scan for something. When she doesn't find whatever it is, her brow furrows. Santana feels Brittany's heart speed, close to hers.

_Oh God._

For the first time since waking, Santana becomes aware that she hears no circus sounds anywhere—just birdsongs and the chirruping of insects. She and Brittany sit bolt upright.

"Brittany!" Santana gasps, realizing their grave error.

"Come on, darlin'," Brittany says, shifting beneath Santana so that they can both get to their feet.

As Santana scrambles to her knees, she finds her body bone-hard and almost bruised from sleeping on the solid earth; her feet feel so cold that she wonders if she can even walk on them. Dew clings to the grass shoots around her and dampens her hair. The fact that she awakened out-of-doors instead of in her tent disorients her.

If Brittany weren't there to link their pinky fingers together and gesture for Santana to follow her, Santana might be too flustered to move. As it is, she simply chases where Brittany leads, scampering nearly on threes up the hillside.

Sure enough, when they reach the crest of the hill, they find the white city vanished, an empty field of crushed grass holding its place beneath their star carnival of tigers hunting crickets and birds driving buggies. The sky seems lighter than it ought to be at first waking and more birds sing than usual.

"Brittany," Santana says helplessly, suddenly imagining all the bad things that could happen to two penniless, shoeless girls whom the circus happened to leave behind.

"They haven't all left yet," Brittany says breathlessly.

She points to the far end of the pitch, where Santana can just barely make out the tail end of the circus caravan rising over the foggy field, already in motion.

Without waiting another second, Brittany takes Santana fully by the hand, and the two girls begin to sprint, Santana's bangles jangling at her wrists, Brittany's tatty skirt hiked up nearly to her waist, her long legs moon-pale against the darkness. Bugs whip past their faces, and the girls breathe on a cycle, Santana in and Brittany out, so loudly that they can hear each other's respirations. The farther they run, the more Santana worries that her lungs and heart might explode from the strain.

(She had never run so much in her life before arriving at the circus.)

Grass cuts against the bare soles of Santana's feet, but she ignores it, too focused on getting where she needs to go to care about such small pain. The wagons in the distance may soon disappear onto the main road, and she and Brittany can't miss them for anything. Santana clings to Brittany's hand and wills herself to run faster, faster, faster.

Luckily, wagon wheels churn slowly over the grass, bumping into divots and catching on little snags—delays which allow Brittany and Santana to gain on the wagons coming down the pitch. Once the girls get to within one-hundred yards of the caravan, Brittany raises her free hand and calls out over the morning quiet.

"Hey! Wait for us!"

Santana sees the passengers in the wagon closest to herself and Brittany for the first time: Ma Jones and a handful of kitchen girls, the last ones out of camp after breakfast. Their wagon follows along after the chuck.

As soon as Brittany hollers, Ma Jones turns where she sits and says something to the driver—a faceless supe whom Santana can't properly see from so far away. The wagon slows in its tracks and then stops, though Brittany and Santana continue to sprint.

Vaguely, Santana wonders if Ma Jones would have stopped the wagon if it were just her approaching and not her and Brittany together.

Brittany releases her grip on Santana as they get to the wagon and takes a running leap onto the mud perch, alighting on the wagon bed from the ground. She lands in a cat crouch and immediately turns to offer a hand to Santana, helping Santana onto the wagon after her, mindful of Santana's layered skirts, which catch on almost everything.

Ma Jones and her girls regard the whole process disapprovingly, scowling at Santana and Brittany, who were both foolish enough to miss breakfast and to very nearly allow the circus to leave town without them. Ma Jones seems particularly appalled; she stares at Brittany and Santana as one would at the person who says something vulgar at a high society party, like she almost can't believe they dare to exist. As Brittany and Santana set down at the far end of the wagon bed, she shakes her head at them, disgusted.

Santana expects Ma to yell at her and Brittany for their dawdling, but Ma doesn't. Instead, Ma just gestures for the driver—the nameless supe who helped tackle the preacher on the midway yesterday—to get going. Santana can only suppose that Ma refrains from shouting on account of the early hour.

The supe whistles for his mules to move, and the wagon jostles forward, trundling over the uneven terrain at a crawl. Santana and Brittany lean back where they sit, their breaths storm-heavy and their faces flushed. Brittany sneaks Santana a guilty smile, glancing from Santana's eyes to her lips and back again.

Now that they've safely boarded the wagon, the fact that they slept too late does somehow seem funny. Santana returns Brittany's smile, exhausted but happy. She hums as she exhales and laughs when Brittany bumps their feet together where they sit across from each other in the bed.

After a minute, Santana leans back against the railing of the wagon bed and closes her eyes, reveling in the fact that she finally gets to spend a morning with Brittany. When she opens her eyes again, she sees a rider approaching the wagon on horseback, circling around from somewhere further up the caravan line.

Sam.

Sam whistles out a high, clear note as he approaches the wagon, grinning like someone gave him a nickel just for his handsome face. He tips his hat at the ladies in the wagon bed but very pointedly doesn't look at them. Instead, he starts to sing.

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
>come out tonight, come out tonight?<br>__Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

Sam has a young voice—much less gruff than those of Santana's father and his doctor friends when they used to sing their parlor songs—pleasant in its artlessness. He leans over in his saddle, close to the wagon bed. His floppy clown shoes poke through the stirrups hanging from his fender. Though his horse snuffs a bit, it doesn't seem to mind either his slow pace or the strange angle at which he rides.

_As I was walking down the street, down the street, down the street  
><em>_a pretty little girl I chanced to meet  
><em>_under the silvery moon_

_I asked her if she'd be my wife, be my wife, be my wife  
><em>_I'd be happy all my life  
><em>_if she would marry me_

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
>come out tonight, come out tonight?<br>__Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

Sam pretends he sings just to sing, but he doesn't fool anyone; he couldn't pay Ma Jones more attention than if he were to stare at her and give her a thousand dirty dandelions all at once.

For her part, Ma Jones shrinks in response to Sam's song, looking anywhere but at him. She doesn't blush—or, if she does, Santana can't see it—but she does bite her lip and look wonderfully shy in a way that Santana has never seen her look before. When Sam finishes his song, Ma makes a great show of rolling her eyes at him.

By the time he croons the last note, Sam has the kitchen girls giggling, Brittany tapping her foot against the bed of the wagon, himself blushing redder than his clown nose when he has his show rouge on, and Santana feeling strangely hot in the cheeks, especially when she glances at Brittany and finds Brittany grinning like she has a secret.

Santana's heart skitters, mouse-quick, beneath her breastbone, and she tucks her knees more tightly to her body, as flustered as if she had been the one to serenade someone instead of Sam.

_(I'd be happy all my life if she would marry me.)_

* * *

><p>When the circus caravan reaches the train depot, Sam dismounts from his horse, unlatches the wagon bed, and helps Santana, Brittany, and the kitchen girls to the ground, taking them one by one by the hands and allowing them to use his shoulder as an anchor as they leap from the mud flap to the earth. He tips his hat to each girl in turn, smiling dopily, still somewhat pink around the ears following his impromptu vocal recital.<p>

As Ma Jones approaches him from the back of the wagon, Sam stares at her expectantly, offering her his hand as she steps onto the flap before she jumps. Though Sam seems eager and almost breathless, Ma Jones refuses to meet his eye.

"You're a fool, Samuel Evans," she says in a strange, clipped voice.

Santana can't help but notice that her words seem to mean something other than what they say, exactly.

Ma steadies herself against the wagon bed rail and hops to the ground without accepting Sam's offered hand. She lands roughly and her kitchen girls immediately flock to her, catching her up into their tide of gossip.

Santana glimpses Ma's face before Ma and her posse walk away: gone is Ma's usual veneer of pride, worn away to reveal raw, underlying sentiment. In Ma, Santana sees a reaching but also the good sense not to reach, a juvenile impulse and then adult restraint. The contradiction in Ma's expression confuses Santana but also resonates deep in the hollow of her, familiar.

(Sometimes people offer what one cannot have.)

(Sometimes we can't help but want what seems so impossibly close.)

Ma's expression puts a pang through Santana's heart for a reason Santana can't fully articulate in her mind, though only for the briefest second. Ma and her girls soon disappear amidst the hubbub, presumably off to find a boxcar to board, and Sam passes his horse into the custody of a supe, who leads it toward the livestock cars at the back of the train. Brittany slips her pinky finger into Santana's, and, at once, Santana forgets all about anything other than Brittany.

"You want to ride to Cherokee together?" Brittany asks, as if it's even a question.

(Santana has never bloomed before the sun came out before.)

"Okay," she says in the same sweet, little voice that seems to catch her throat whenever Brittany does something especially precious—a regular occurrence whenever Santana and Brittany are together.

"Right this way, Queen Cleopatra," Brittany says in her phony proper accent, leading Santana down the line. Santana laughs, and Brittany smirks, pleased with herself.

With most of the boxcars already occupied to capacity, Brittany and Santana must walk a long way—almost to the caboose of the train—to find a cabin that can accommodate them. Eventually, they come to a mostly empty freight car and help each other climb aboard it, with Santana holding back Brittany's skirt so it doesn't snag on the flatbed and Brittany extending a hand to Santana to pull her up into the train once she has herself situated.

As the two girls scramble into their car, it occurs to Santana that Brittany and her father likely ride a different car every day, same as Santana and Puck do, and that, consequently, she will probably never manage to find Brittany in the mornings unless she does so by happy accident or unless she and Brittany arrive to the train depot together. She sets a goal to try to find Brittany more often at breakfast when she can.

Several other members of the company clamber into the cabin at the same time as Brittany and Santana do, including the Flying Dragon Changs and some odd supes and seamstresses. All their motion must kick up dust from the flatbed because, just as Santana manages to stand up inside the car, she feels a tickle prick at the back of her throat and in her nose. Before she can help herself, she sneezes, barely remembering to cover her face with her shirtsleeve as she does so.

(Her grandmother would scold her bad manners, failing to carry a handkerchief.)

When Santana opens her eyes, she finds Brittany staring at her and wearing the most peculiar, adoring expression, as if she can't believe that Santana exists. Her mouth hangs open in a little _o_ and she presses a hand to her heart, like it might somehow flutter away if she doesn't press it back beneath her breast.

"Bless your soul, darlin'!" she gasps.

A blush rises to Santana's cheeks; she's never felt as perfectly interesting to anyone as she does to Brittany right now. For a second, Santana glances away, self-conscious under Brittany's attention. When she looks back to Brittany, she finds that Brittany's eyes have turned deep and fervent. In that moment, Santana wonders if Brittany might kiss her. Her whole self warms to the notion, but then the signalman yells that the train must soon depart the depot, and his call jolts both Santana and Brittany to an awareness of their place.

"Santana," Brittany says sweetly, shaking her head, maybe at Santana, maybe at herself. She chuckles and leads Santana into a corner of the boxcar, where they sit down for the ride.

Santana starts to lean against the wall, but Brittany doesn't bother. Instead, Brittany sets down cross-legged, directly facing Santana, staring at Santana with that always-the-same and always-different curiosity. Santana feels something spark in her like a flame in a kerosene lamp and turns to face Brittany, crossing her legs, too. She smiles when Brittany reaches over to tuck her gypsy skirts around her feet.

"Now your toes won't get cold," Brittany says gently.

When Santana realizes that Brittany can't do the same with her skirt—which is too short and tatty to cover Brittany's feet—Santana gestures for Brittany to slide her toes under her gypsy skirt, as well, nodding to encourage her.

"You, too," Santana invites, and Brittany grins at Santana before snuggling her toes under the skirt's hem.

"Toasty," Brittany says gratefully.

(Something in Santana's chest squeezes.)

(When the train pulls out of the station, the lurch in Santana's stomach has nothing to do with motion.)

* * *

><p>Somehow Brittany convinces Santana that the thing to do on a long train ride is to play hand games—and especially for someone who has never had the pleasure to play hand games before.<p>

"Everyone should try it at least once," Brittany says in her just-so way, "—like okra, darlin'. I'll bet you're better at hand games than Rachel Berry anyway."

Santana isn't better at hand games than anyone.

The game requires that Brittany and Santana clap each other's opposite hands thrice in succession and then form _x_ shapes over their own bodies with their arms before repeating the pattern, all while chanting a rhyme so ridiculous that Santana can scarcely listen to it without laughing straightaway.

She and Brittany sit facing each other, their knees pressed together and can't keep from staring at each other's faces, even though they really ought to concentrate on the task at hand. They can't stop giggling.

Between her and Brittany's unwillingness to look away from each other, their laughter, and the fact that Santana's first impulse is always to use her left hand to do everything, Santana doesn't think that anyone in history has ever played a worse game of Miss Mary Mack than she and Brittany play right now.

"Brittany!" Santana gasps, busting up as they somehow manage to miss each other's hands for what must be the seventeenth consecutive round of clapping.

But Brittany just keeps on with the rhyme, trying to look stern at Santana over their hands but failing spectacularly.

_Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack  
><em>_all dressed in black, black, black  
><em>_with silver buttons, buttons, buttons  
><em>_all down her back, back, back_

Brittany feigns seriousness at the game, but grins widely, choking back laughter each time she and Santana miss each other's claps and pat each other's wrists or swipe the air instead. The more Brittany fumbles her words, the more hilarious the moment becomes.

_She asked her mother, mother, mother  
><em>_for fifteen cents, cents, cents  
><em>_to see the cow, cow, cow  
><em>_jump over the fence, fence, fence..._

Santana doesn't think she has ever felt happier just to waste time with anyone than she does with Brittany. They carry on so loudly that their voices fill the train cabin, and the other riders in the car stare at them, perplexed as to what could possibly seem so funny to the girls at this hour of the morning.

_It jumped so high, high, high  
><em>_it touched the sky, sky, sky  
><em>_and it never came back, back, back  
><em>_'til the Fourth of July-ly-ly!_

Santana stumbles through the song's words along with Brittany until both of them collapse against each other in stitches, hands clasped together, tangled in Brittany's lap, Santana's head falling onto Brittany's shoulder as they laugh and laugh and laugh.

Just when their laughter nearly subsides, Brittany wriggles her toes, still tucked beneath the hem of Santana's gypsy skirt, brushing Santana's leg, and Santana shrieks at the touch, much to Brittany's grand delight.

"Brittany! Your feet feel like ice!" Santana complains.

"Cold as Canada, darlin'!" Brittany teases.

Santana has never behaved in such a silly way with anyone, even yesterday when she and Brittany dressed in costume in the tent. Her stomach aches from laughter, and she wonders if she could feel dizzier than this if she were drunk.

Brittany seems to feel just the same, with primrose pinking her cheeks and ears, her mouth hung open in a smile. Santana can count Brittany's pulse where their palms touch; it beats just as lively as the music at the down day dance when Santana first saw Brittany from across the fire.

Something swells between the two girls, summer warm and wonderful, and that same stoked feeling Santana felt yesterday in the dressing tent when Brittany touched her waist smolders deep in her belly. She finds that she nearly aches for wanting, though she can't say exactly what it is she wants.

For a second, Brittany and Santana grin, perfectly delighted and enthused, but then the swell breaks like a wave upon shore and they suddenly feel less giddy than tired, all the energy let out of them. Their smiles change but don't fade away, growing thoughtful and quiet instead of careless and loud. The flaring feeling in Santana's belly spreads out, low and insistent, until finally it seems that if Santana can't do more than just hold Brittany's hands, she'll sear to cinders.

"May I...?" Santana starts but doesn't quite know how to finish.

She opens her mouth and then closes it again. She doesn't know quite what she wants to ask. Somehow, "May I...?" may just be it. Her gaze fixes on Brittany, swathed in light, the first concentrated spades of morning sun shining through the open boxcar door behind Brittany's shoulder. Brittany looks entirely resplendent, beautiful behind her smile, beautiful in front of the light, beautiful in herself alone. Her pretty hair haloes her, softer and brighter than Santana has yet seen it.

Someone coughs on the other side of the boxcar, and both girls jolt, momentarily broken from their spell. It doesn't take long for their eyes to find each other again, though. Brittany waits for Santana to speak, patient and hopeful.

"May I put your hair in braids?" Santana asks shyly.

(It's not quite what she wants to ask, but it is something that she would like to do.)

Brittany's gaze doesn't deviate from Santana's at all. "Anything you like, darlin'," she says in a honeyed voice. "Anything at all."

(It sounds like something else, though still exactly what Brittany means to say.)

* * *

><p>Brittany has the sort of hair one reads about in books—like Lady Rowena in <em>Ivanhoe<em>, fair and Saxon and fine as silk strands. It's so unlike Santana's own hair, which is so thick, coarse, and unruly. Whereas Santana's hair resists even her horse bristle brush, the tangles in Brittany's hair break apart at Santana's lightest touch, like loose knots in satin ribbons, slippery and easy.

Brittany sits with her back to Santana, her head hanging forward as Santana combs through her locks with gentle fingers, her knees curled up to her chest for warmth. Though Santana can't see her face, she guesses that Brittany keeps her eyes closed; Brittany stays so still and breathes so calmly that Santana wouldn't feel surprised to find that she had fallen asleep. Santana remembers how much she used to like having her grandmother stroke her hair and wonders if Brittany feels the same.

Once she has Brittany's hair combed out, as soft and smooth as daybreak, Santana begins to separate the locks from one another, dividing Brittany's hair into sections, starting at the scalp and moving down to the ends. She holds the strands between the fingers on her right hand and works them over with the fingers on her left.

"I'm not pulling too much, am I?" she asks, suddenly worried.

"Nope," Brittany says.

"Well, you let me know if I am at all."

Santana must not pull too much or maybe even a little bit because Brittany remains silent for a long, long time, moving her neck as Santana directs it, pliant and responsive to Santana's touch. For her part, Santana finds herself falling into a trance as she braids, suffusing her hands in Brittany's hair the way she would in a stream of water or like she did in the big top tent in the pillars of light. The stoked feeling in the pit of her belly grows ever more insistent the closer she sits to Brittany's back, the more Brittany's heat becomes her heat, until it almost startles her.

"Santana?" Brittany says. "You okay back there, darlin'?"

Santana hadn't realized she stopped moving.

(Breathing.)

"Of course," Santana says, surprised to hear her own voice low and coffee-dark. She spares a look at her own handiwork, tracing the braid as it progresses from Brittany's scalp to midway through her locks, looking to where she still holds three strands of Brittany's hair partitioned between her three fingers.

(Spinning gold into plaits.)

(She has the best fairy.)

"Almost done," she assures Brittany.

"Take your time," Brittany says.

* * *

><p>Without a ribbon to tie the braid once it is finished, Santana doesn't expect it to stay in Brittany's hair for very long. She tells Brittany as much.<p>

"You could always do it again, if you like," Brittany teases—only what she says doesn't sound much like teasing.

"Sure thing," Santana teases back, not really teasing either.

Brittany faces Santana, smiling at her. "Mama used to braid my hair when I was little," she says in a quiet voice, like she does when she tells a secret. "After she died, Daddy tried to braid my hair once, but his thumbs were too big, I think, so he accidentally tied it in a knot. Rachel said I looked like I'd been in a twister, but I've never seen a twister and neither has she, so I told her that her mouth looked like it could fit a whole stagecoach inside it. Then she stopped taking to me for a week. Mrs. Evans had to spend two hours combing my hair out before the show and she had to borrow Mrs. Adams' best silver Unger brush to do it."

The story is bittersweet, but Brittany doesn't tell it that way—she treats it like a happy memory, her tone light and expression thoughtful. Santana doesn't mind laughing about it, then; she likes the part about what Brittany said to Rachel Berry and makes a point to remember it. She also just likes hearing Brittany talk in her pretty, matter-of-this, matter-of-that way.

"When I was little, Abuela used to tell me my hair was like carpet," Santana offers, shrugging.

Brittany's eyes flick over her. Without blinking, Brittany says, "The softest, nicest carpet in the whole world, maybe. Like maybe the carpet that a king would have in a room in his palace—except it would maybe be in a secret room, like the kind he'd never walked even once."

Santana blushes so thoroughly that she thinks Brittany can probably see it even in her lips. Her eyes dart away from Brittany, flicking to the spot of light on the floor here and the iron latch on the door there. She feels hot all over and the nagging want deep inside of her grows more insistent still. She knocks her knees together.

When Santana looks back to Brittany, she finds Brittany fidgeting, too.

Brittany really does look pretty with the braid in her hair—though, of course, Brittany always looks pretty anyway, angelic as Dante's Beatrice.

"Do you feel hungry, darlin'?" Brittany asks, and, for the suggestion, Santana realizes that she does feel hungry indeed.

"A bit," Santana says meekly, downplaying the fact that she enjoyed neither a proper supper last night nor any breakfast at all this morning. She looks to Brittany. "Do you feel hungry?"

Brittany nods. "Starved."

Santana glances from the floorboards back to Brittany's face. She knows they still have many hours before lunch and wonders if they won't swoon from hunger sometime before then. Ma Jones certainly won't take pity on them, not even once they reach Cherokee; she'll just call them fools for missing breakfast on account of their lollygagging. Santana feels guilty for causing Brittany to miss her meals. She opens her mouth to apologize for it but doesn't get the chance to do so.

"Come on, darlin'," Brittany says, standing up suddenly and extending a hand to Santana, helping her to her feet, as well. "Let's go get something to eat."

Before Santana can wonder how Brittany intends to conjure food from the ether inside a moving boxcar, Brittany scampers over to the corner, gesturing for Santana to follow her. In the next instant, Santana startles, for there sits Sam where she hadn't expected to see him, hunkered against the back wall, plain as day.

How could Santana not have noticed him before?

Unlike in St. James, Sam now dons a knight's shift over his shirt, his jacket doffed and rolled into a bundle at his side, his hat sitting lonely atop it. He looks smart in jay blue, a felt cross emblazoned over his chest—every inch a cavalier, as dashing as d'Artagnan.

He certainly doesn't seem as happy as a cavalier, though. Instead, he wears a thick pout, hands jammed in his pockets, and stares out the door to the boxcar, shoulders slumped. He scuffs his clown shoes against the floorboards beneath his feet. Santana doesn't know if she's ever seen a sorrier looking boy.

(For once, Sam is a sad clown.)

When Sam sees Brittany and Santana approaching him, he musters a smile, but not a very bright one; his eyes still look dull, and his jaw hangs low, even though he keeps his mouth shut.

"G'morning, ladies," he says, nodding his hello.

"We're here to see a man about some chow," Brittany announces, setting down in front of Sam in a crouch. "What's the good word, Sammy?"

Sam looks between her and Santana. "Britt?" he says, shortening her name.

(Santana likes the sound of it.)

(Somehow, the idea that her two favorite people at the circus might know each other never occurred to Santana before now.)

"Do you have any biscuits left?" Brittany asks.

"Biscuits left—?" Sam repeats, voice tighter than it normally is. His eyes dart to the rolled jacket at his side, and he swallows noticeably.

"You know," Brittany says in her just-so way, "the biscuits you always steal from Ma Jones after breakfast. The ones she pretends not to notice that you take but that you do take because you care more about what happens to your stomach than to your clown behind."

Brittany imitates Ma Jones on the last three words. Her gaze shifts to Sam's jacket, too.

"Why do you—?" Sam starts.

"Because Santana and I missed breakfast, and we need some biscuits to tide us over until lunch, otherwise we're liable to swoon. You wouldn't want us to swoon, would you, Sammy?" Brittany implores.

Sam looks to Santana, somewhere between helpless and flabbergasted.

"Like Britt says," Santana agrees with a shrug, trying out the nickname on her own tongue and liking how it sounds.

For a second, Sam looks between Brittany and Santana, picked upon, but then he shakes his head, smiles, and reaches for his rolled jacket. Setting the hat aside, he digs into the jacket pocket, tongue pinched, pink, between his teeth. After some rustling, he produces a first biscuit and them a second, a little crumbly but otherwise no worse for having been stuffed into such a small space.

Sam shakes his head as he passes the biscuits over to Brittany, as if he can't believe he relented to her request so easily. "You're just lucky I can't say no to a lady," he says.

"We sure are," Brittany agrees, offering the larger of the two biscuits to Santana. "Thank you."

She pats the ground beside her, gesturing for Santana to sit down, which Santana does, folding her legs modestly beneath herself and adjusting her skirt so that Sam can't see her bare ankles.

"Thank you," Santana parrots, nodding at Sam as she crumbles off a bite of biscuit for herself.

For a few minutes, Santana and Brittany eat in silence, slinging glances at each other from the side and smiling at Sam as they chew. He seems less morose for their company but still not like his usual go-lucky self. Though he wears a contented expression, he somehow seems smaller than he should. Santana feels strangely discomfited, remembering what happened between Sam and Ma Jones on the ride to the depot this morning. Her thoughts about rules and dandelions and dancing by the light of the moon trip over each other, confusing her both heart and mind.

(According to the rules, Sam ought to have whatever he wants.)

(According to the rules, Sam can't have the one thing he wants.)

Once Brittany and Santana finish eating and brush the loose crumbs from the cradles of their skirts, scattering them between the floorboards, Sam speaks to them.

"So how goes the circus, Ms. Santana?" he asks.

Sam means it as a harmless question to distract him from his own troubles, not to remind Santana of hers. Unfortunately, his query does just that. For the first time since Brittany followed Santana after supper and took her stargazing on the hillside, Santana thinks back to poor Mr. Hammond and how he died after Santana spread his cards.

"I'm not so partial to reading tarot," Santana mutters, glancing away from Sam at the floor.

"She's swell at reading palms, though," Brittany says quickly.

Santana smiles, in spite of herself, pink-cheeked at Brittany's compliment. "You've still never seen me read anyone's palm," she protests, bashful all of a sudden because Brittany treats her far too kindly in every way.

Since she can't stand to look at Brittany for the moment—Brittany is just too perfectly everything—she chances a glance at Sam and finds him wearing a very queer expression, like he just tasted something surprisingly sweet when he had expected sour. His eyes shift between Brittany and Santana, thoughtful.

"Well, how about you read my palm right now?" Sam says. "That way, Brittany can see you read a palm, and you can repay me for breakfast."

Santana flushes, self-conscious. "Oh, no," she demurs. "I couldn't possibly—"

"Aw, come on! You already know some of my fortune anyway!" Sam sticks out his hand to Santana until she takes it in her own. "You can tell me all about how I won't have any snack today because someone stole my biscuits!"

Sam smiles widely, and when Santana risks a peek at Brittany, she finds Brittany smiling widely, too. That settles it, then. Santana returns their smiles with a wily grin of her own. She slips into her character, straightening herself and finding her accent to wear.

_"Vale, señor Evans,"_ she says in Spanish, to start off.

She peers down at Sam's palm, curling and uncurling his fingers in her own as if they were a roll of warped parchment. She looks at the creases running over Sam's skin and understands nothing more about them than she usually would when reading for some other patron, but somehow she feels infinitely more comfortable talking to Sam with Brittany watching her than she would in any other situation.

"Is it that bad, Doc?" Sam teases.

"Hush," Brittany shushes him.

(Santana feels a wave of heat rise in her chest.)

"Hm," she says. "I fear to tell you something, uh... _desventurado_." She pauses for the effect, waiting for both Sam and Brittany's eyes to find her own, and then smirks: "You will not have any snack today because someone stole your biscuits."

Sam laughs aloud at Santana's cheekiness, and Brittany smile turns so bright that even Mr. Rockefeller would have a difficult time financing its match in electrical light. Santana thinks that if she does nothing else right all day, at least she's pleased Brittany now, and what else could matter? Sam's approval makes Santana happy; Brittany's approval makes Santana shine. She swallows down her grin to a smirk for the sake of her performance.

"More bad news, I fear, _señor_," she says, pretending to discern discouraging signs from Sam's palm.

"Don't tell him he won't get lunch!" Brittany jokes.

Santana smirks wider when Sam's eyebrows raise in concern. She shakes her head pityingly. "I'm afraid I must tell you that you'll never make it as a sad clown in the circus," she says. "You're far too happy."

And both Sam and Brittany laugh this time, Brittany clapping her hands like Santana has just performed some remarkable stunt.

"See?" Brittany says, prodding Sam's shoulder. "I told you she's swell at her job!"

(She seems proud of Santana in a way that a person can only be when someone rewards her faith.)

"Well, do you have any good news for me?" Sam asks, stifling more laughter.

Santana hums under her breath and pretends to deliberate, pouring over his palm like a philologist would a translation. "Hm," she says, rubbing at her chin.

An idea has begun to take hold of her; she wants to give Sam something unlike her usual brand of commonsense advice. She wants to tell him what he wants to hear. She wants to give him a promise as freely as he gives out dandelions.

She knows she ought not to do so—not when she hasn't the right to make promises about the future any more than she has the right to speak her mind to men like Mr. Adams or Mr. Fabray—but then she looks at Brittany, and something reckless, hopeful, and desperate inside her decides to say what it will, and not just because Sam wants to hear it.

As suddenly as Santana makes her decision, the mood surrounding the reading changes; she looks deeply at Sam, willing him not to mistake a word of what she intends to tell him. She feels fervent, soft, and almost as connected to her palmistry as she often feels to her cartomancy, like it stirs something inside her. She gives a final glance to Brittany and draws a breath, brave.

_(Can I tell you a secret?)_

"The object of your affections will soon take note of you, and she'll"—Santana hesitates—"she'll make you so, so happy."

* * *

><p>Sam, Brittany, and Santana finish out their train ride huddled close together, trading jokes, and arrive in Cherokee—which Sam says is in Iowa—over three hours after departing from St. James.<p>

Sam seems in much better spirits at the time he detrains than he did when Brittany and Santana first pestered him about the biscuits. Santana doesn't know if he fully believes in her prophecy about Ma Jones, but he does seem hopeful about it, at least enough that his earlier failure to please Ma Jones no longer seems to vex him.

After Sam helps Brittany and Santana from the boxcar at the station, he tips his hat to both of them in turn. "Thank you, ladies," he says kindly. "I'll see you at lunch." He walks away smiling, presumably off to find his family somewhere further down the line.

As Santana watches him go, she wonders for how long his smile will last once he encounters Ma Jones again. It's draining, wanting what one cannot have; Santana doesn't know that she did the right thing in promising Sam that Ma Jones would notice him and make him happy instead of sad. She'd like to think that hope never hurt anyone, but she knows differently, after all.

Santana looks over at Brittany to find Brittany watching her with unapologetic interest, smiling at Santana as much with her eyes as with her mouth. Santana's heartbeat picks up, just from Brittany's look.

"What is it?" she asks, wonderfully nervous under Brittany's attention.

The sun shines, already bright overhead, and the air around them sticks to itself, steam-hot and humid, but it's Brittany's gaze that causes heat to rise to Santana's cheeks and chest. Santana shuffles her feet and glances between Brittany and the dirt, feeling as if Brittany can see everything about her.

"You called me Britt," Brittany observes. "On the train, you called me Britt."

Santana startles. "Do you not like that? I just heard Sam—"

"I like it a lot, darlin'," Brittany assures her, brushing her wrist, smoothing over her skin. The touch runs through Santana like a static shock. Brittany looks at Santana, deep and soft, the tiger gold around her pupils trimmed with the clearest blue.

"Okay," Santana says simply, her heartbeat speeding in her chest, and that seems just the thing.

Brittany links their two pinky fingers together and leads Santana to the circled wagons congregated around the depot. Santana spots Rachel Berry clambering onto the deck of a sloven with her father Hiram and their quadroon manservant.

Though she searches for him briefly amongst the other faces of the company, Santana sees Puck nowhere and quickly puts him from her mind as she and Brittany board a rambler along with the Flying Dragon Changs, who mutter to one another in what must be Chinese but otherwise ignore Brittany and Santana, treating them as if they weren't present.

Iowa seems much brighter than Minnesota, like the earth is somehow closer to the sun here than it is in other places. Iowa appears much less green than Minnesota, too, and actually rather dusty. The scent of farm waste hangs in the air everywhere, though the shops and buildings in downtown Cherokee are so quaint and precious that Santana can nearly forget the bad air for their sake.

Cherokee seems close in size to St. James, with crowds much like the ones Santana saw yesterday on her shopping trip with Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester. The town boasts a broad main street, wide enough to fit probably eight or nine wagons arranged side by side across it. The trim along the signage on the storefronts blares brilliant white against the morning sunlight so that Santana has to squint to make out lettering.

The people of Cherokee seem thrilled to have the circus in town; they whoop from the sidewalks and wave hankies at the performers as they pass. The circus band plays a lively march that rings out over the cheering and noise and Santana taps her foot along to the music where she and Brittany sit facing backward, their legs hanging over the mud flap of the rambler. They wave to the hoi polloi on either side of them and every now and again, Brittany bumps her hips to Santana's, smiling at Santana's confusion every time.

Santana has decided that she rather likes the circus parade—and especially when she gets to ride it out with Brittany. Brittany is a natural performer who mugs for the crowds and always seems to know just the perfect moment to wave to this little child standing on the sidewalk or blow a kiss to that elderly gentleman watching the procession from his storefront window.

Everyone who sees Brittany can't help but smile at her; she's fearlessly friendly and entertains with her every action. Santana admires her so much that half the time she forgets to wave to the crowd and just watches Brittany as though she were one of the citizens of Cherokee and not a circus performer herself.

Today marks the debut of the much-ballyhooed knight sketch, with all the men dressed up in the shifts that Brittany and Santana helped sew for them the other day. The boys look smart in their new costumes, as heroic as Mr. Spenser's Redcrosse. They bear wooden swords and shields and stage mock fights with each other in the street.

When Blaine and Sam—already made up as clowns, as per their usual, having left the train station—wage a particularly fierce duel just behind the rambler in which Brittany and Santana ride, the girls cheer for them and the crowd joins in, booing when Blaine raps Sam's calf with his sword and applauding when Sam knocks the trilby hat from Blaine's head in return.

(Blaine looked funny wearing a hat with his knight's costume anyway.)

(Both Blaine and Sam look funny, dressed as knight-clowns.)

It takes more time than it usually would for the circus to make its full procession through the town, not only due to the knights' cavorting but also because the company must make several turns down side streets before arriving at its designated place.

When the circus company does finally turn up at their grounds at nearly nine o'clock, they find the white city already mostly standing, with only the last touches on the big top left to go. The air swelters, oppressive not only in its high temperature but also in its mugginess. Most unfortunately, Santana's skirts and blouse trap heat in them like a sauna.

At first, Santana thinks she feels woozy because of the heat, but then Brittany mentions that she's thirsty, and Santana realizes that she is, as well, having had no water with her biscuit this morning, and so the two girls decide to find themselves something to drink.

Brittany leads Santana across the camp toward the mess pit, their pinky fingers fitted together, and though Santana's head almost spins from dehydration and the soaring temperature of the day, she nevertheless can't help but revel in the fact that she has kept company with Brittany all morning so far. Provided no one fixes to separate them and that Brittany doesn't go running off, as is her sometimes custom, Santana intends to spend all day with Brittany, if she can. In fact, she can't think of anything better.

By now, Brittany's hair has already begun to slip out of its braid. She looks pretty as a Manet girl upon the verdant grass. Santana admires her very much and wants to keep looking and looking at her, like a favorite page in a book.

Though Ma Jones and her girls already flitter around the mess pit, Brittany and Santana manage to avoid them by taking a circuitous route to the pit around the back of the chuck. There, the two girls find not only the steel washing tub but also a line of several oak barrels with spigots, all filled with water. Laughter and gossip babble up from the mess pit, but everything beyond the mess pit on the other side of the chuck resonates with stillness and quiet, shrouded in blue shadow.

Brittany puts a finger to her lips, indicating that Santana ought to say silent, and spares Santana both a cheeky grin and a wink before creeping around the back of the chuck and ascending its ladder, headed into the belly of the wagon. As Brittany goes, Santana's heart speeds. Santana wonders what will happen if someone catches Brittany at her adventure.

Really, Santana knows there isn't anything wrong with wanting a drink of water on a hot day, but somehow she loses her senses to the simple excitement of doing something surreptitious with Brittany. She feels like Jim Hawkins taking the oilskin pouch from Billy Bones' chest when the pirates come to the inn, except decidedly sillier, and finds that she has to bite her lip to keep from laughing when Brittany emerges from the belly of the chuck thirty seconds after she entered it bearing two tin drinking cups, making a great show of checking left, then right, before hopping down to the earth, ignoring the ladder, and tiptoeing over to her, though they're the only two people in sight.

"Merry-andrew, Britt!" Santana teases, taking a cup when Brittany offers it to her.

Brittany's whole self seems to smile at the nickname. She glances from Santana's eyes to her mouth then back again, trying to bite down her grin but failing spectacularly. She shrugs.

"Why, I don't know what you're talking about, darlin'," she says slyly, crouching down to put her own cup under a spigot, running the water stream to get herself a drink. She works the barrel for Santana, too, grinning at Santana the whole time until Santana feels so sweet on her that she almost can't stand it.

With another wink to Santana, Brittany draws the cup to her lips to take a drink. Santana mirrors her action.

The water is awful, warm with day heat, with an oak taste and a tin aftertaste.

"It's like drinking a fire iron but without the soot," Brittany says, pulling a face, and she's exactly right.

The girls only take a sip or two each before pouring the rest of the water into the dirt, watching as it dries almost immediately upon hitting the ground. Today may be the hottest day Santana has encountered at the circus yet, and Brittany certainly isn't helping matters; every time she glances at Santana, Santana feels a rush of heat to her face, her chest, and the pit of her belly. Santana clutches her tin cup and licks her lips.

She wants to kiss Brittany so, so much.

"What are you two lounge-abouts doing, hiding behind the chuck wagon, making fool talk while there's work to be done?"

(It had been too long since Ma Jones had snuck up on Santana.)

Both Brittany and Santana start, turning to face Ma Jones in an instant. She stands with her hands on her hips, her wooden spoon clutched in one fist, and looks more self-possessed than Napoleon. Santana cowers before her, but Brittany's face just blanks.

"First y'all missed breakfast because you were off making Lord-knows-what-all kind of mischief this morning, then y'all almost missed the train because of your lollygagging, and now y'all be shirking work, playing with my cooking water when there's chores to be done! I weren't aware that Mr. Adams had given y'all the day off."

Santana's happy mood deflates, replaced by a quick and nagging guilt. She and Brittany hadn't meant to skive off their morning duties, per se, but suddenly she feels as if they had.

Santana hates disappointing those who are in authority over her and has since she was a small child. On the rare occasions when she would misbehave at the bachelor cottage, her father never had need to strike her or to lock her away in order to make her regret her misdeeds. He had only to scold her in his dark, disappointed, coffee voice before she would weep for what she had done, pressing her tears into his jacket, telling him over and over that she was sorry and begging him to forgive her, worried that he might never return to the cottage to see her again if she ever were to dishearten him enough.

(Her head knew better than to think that Papa could stay away from her.)

(Her heart has always wondered how anyone would ever choose to come to her at all.)

Though Santana already knows Ma Jones dislikes her, it unsettles her to think that she has caused Ma Jones to think even less of her than she did before. Santana may be many things, but she isn't lazy. She had only wanted to spend a morning with Brittany—that's all.

"He hasn't," Santana mutters, looking at her toes, holding her tin cup more tightly than ever.

"I thought not!" Ma snaps. She brandishes her wooden spoon at Santana and Brittany together. "Fine, then. Since y'all are handy and my girls have a hundred better things to do, you two can deliver some coffee to the boys working on the big top so as they don't collapse from sheer exertion!"

Ma flashes Brittany and Santana another severe look, as if she half expects them to scamper away without heeding her like naughty children avoiding their nanny. Santana doesn't feel like scampering anywhere.

"Put them cups back where you found them and meet me in the mess pit once you do. No dawdling!" Ma gruffs, shaking her spoon at the girls one last time before marching back to her kitchen.

Brittany only just waits for Ma to get out of earshot before she laughs. "Golly," she mutters, amused rather than upset by Ma's reproach.

She sounds so precious saying it that Santana can't help but perk up and look at her face. Just seeing Brittany kindles something in Santana's chest; her happiness returns in an instant and she smiles. Brittany smiles back.

Santana wants to kiss Brittany so, so much.

"Hop to it!" Ma shouts at them from the mess pit, and both girls jolt.

"Woops," Brittany smirks, shaking her head at herself, holding out her hand to take Santana's used cup from her.

Santana knows they really ought to stop staring at each other so much or they'll never do anything useful for the circus again in their lives, but she finds she can't be bothered to care. Brittany returns the tin cups to the chuck and then emerges from it once more, offering Santana her pinky finger to hold when she does so. At the very least, Ma hasn't separated Brittany and Santana from one another yet.

"You ready, darlin'?" Brittany asks, leading Santana to the mess pit, and Santana finds that she is.

(She feels ready for anything at all.)

* * *

><p>Ma Jones takes nearly ten full minutes to explain to Brittany and Santana to whom they must bring the coffee and how exactly they ought to distribute it. She foists a wicker basket full of tin cups into Santana's arms, loads Brittany up with two heavy steel coffee pots, and threatens both girls with their jobs if they don't return to the mess pit before lunch. She then finally sends them on their way.<p>

Brittany won't stop wearing her troublemaking grin the whole time Ma talks, much to Ma's annoyance and Santana's intrigue.

(Of all of Brittany's smiles, that's one of Santana's favorites.)

Once Brittany and Santana make it out of the mess area to the main avenue leading from the tent rows of the white city to the midway on the other side of camp, Santana turns to Brittany, ready to tell her that while she would very much like to make an adventure of their errand, she really thinks that they oughtn't cross Ma Jones right now, if they can avoid it.

"Britt, I—"

But before Santana can speak, Brittany draws a finger up to her own lips.

"Shh," Brittany says, still wearing her troublemaking grin.

Santana stops talking, scrunching up her brow and glancing about. She can't see anyone near who might overhear them and can't discern any other reason why Brittany might want her silent. She peers at Brittany, confused, and wonders if there will ever come a day when Brittany's sudden turns won't surprise her.

Brittany reads Santana's confusion and gives her a deep look—so deep that Santana almost feels as though Brittany can see more than there is to her at all. Brittany mouths the word _Quiet_ and then smiles at Santana again, willing Santana to understand. The mischief in Brittany's eyes says enough.

She wants to play a game.

Normally, Santana might want an explanation—which is to say that she might want to know the rules before playing so that she doesn't inadvertently break them—but with Brittany she finds that she doesn't mind just following where Brittany leads, even if Brittany intends to take her to the end of the world, like in a Verne story. In any other situation, sudden silence might unnerve Santana, but with Brittany, it just feels charged with possibility. Santana thinks it comfortable, like well-worn bedclothes.

She nods her consent and Brittany's smile widens.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths.

_Hi_, Santana mouths back.

Though they can't manage to link pinky fingers with Brittany's hands so full, the girls still walk side by side and at a leisurely pace, attuning themselves to the wordlessness between them. They hear the chirrups of birds and the needling of bugs more loudly than they would otherwise, suddenly all ears and eyes, going without voices. Shadows stretch between the tent rows.

Once they pass their first fellow pedestrian, a supe—who seems an imposition to their game—Brittany shrugs a shoulder toward the smaller alleys of the white city, gesturing for Santana to follow her off the main path, which Santana gladly does.

On any usual day, if you were to ask Santana where the circus magic dwelt, she would point you to the midway or the big top, far away from the very pedestrian rows of little white abodes, which seem to her the least exciting part of anything to do with the whole J.P. Adams' outfit.

Not so today, though.

Following at Brittany's heels, the white city transforms before Santana's eyes, becoming one of Mr. Malory's woods, and Brittany one of the maidens of Avalon. Santana feels a rush and forgets the basket dangling from her hand and the coffee pots Brittany holds at her sides. Instead, she thinks only to go wherever Brittany goes and to never allow Brittany to run too far ahead, because that's what they've started to do—run.

Santana feels as if an invisible string connecting her and Brittany to each other, so that whenever Brittany zigs, Santana zags after her. The grass turns from hot to cool and back again under their bare feet each time they pass from sun to shadow, and Santana laughs silently from her ribs, giddy on the quiet and on Brittany and on the spell that laces the moment.

Brittany turns to look at Santana over her shoulder, her mouth open and smiling, and Santana thinks that if only she could memorize the way Brittany's gold hair frames her face like a sunshower, she might never feel sad again in all her living days.

_(I'd be happy all my life if she would marry me.)_

The girls turn the next corner, taking another alley, and come to a long, thin plank of wood resting upon an aluminum bucket against the edge of a tent. The plank forms an incline. Though Santana would simply ignore the plank as another fixture of the white city—which always seems in a constant state of construction, even once fully erected—Brittany's whole face lights at the sight of the thing, and she takes the slope at a whisper-run, tiptoeing up it so that the wood bows beneath her weight. She balances the coffee pots on either side of her.

Santana gasps when Brittany jostles, worried that Brittany will lose her balance, but Brittany recovers in an instant, cat-graceful on her pretty bare feet, making it to the place where the beam meets the bucket, which is only a foot off the ground, after all. She smiles at Santana and pirouettes like she does during the knife throwing act, perfectly poised, despite her precarious placement. The invisible string between the two girls tugs, tugs, tugs and Santana thinks that any circus with Brittany in it can't be an awful one at all. She almost wants to speak but doesn't want to break the game.

Brittany smiles at Santana, her eyes wise and really-seeing. She performs a little half-curtsy, still unable to use her hands for holding onto the coffee pots, and hops down from her perch as if it's nothing, coffee sloshing against steel as she joins Santana in the grass.

The game moves more slowly after that, changed from a run to barely walking, with Brittany taking a few steps and Santana following behind her before both of them turn to face different light and then turn again, letting the sunlight catch them from new angles.

(If Santana didn't know better, she would say they were dancing.)

They reach the end of the tent row, just before the border where the billboards separate the residential camp from the midway, and Brittany comes to a sudden stop, meeting Santana abruptly, so close to her that they nearly touch.

Santana's breath catches behind her lips, and she couldn't manage to ask Brittany what she's doing, even if it weren't for the game.

She can see every freckle on Brittany's face and the honey in the quick of Brittany's eyes, but more than that she can feel Brittany, the heat from Brittany's body, the energy behind Brittany's motion, that insistent charge that draws Santana to Brittany at all hours of the day and night and even in her sleep.

The stoked sensation in the pit of Santana's belly burns and turns over, so fervent that Santana thinks that Brittany must be able to feel it in her; briefly, Santana wonders if Brittany feels the sensation, too.

Brittany's pretty mouth hangs open in a little _o_, and Santana just wants to paint kisses all over it.

The desire to do so rises in Santana like a tide, and Santana stands on her tiptoes, leaning in, curling up, so close that she can hear Brittany's breath against the summer silence.

It's the breath that does it.

Brittany gasps.

Brittany gasps, and Santana loses her nerve, her bravery retreating along with Brittany's breath. She can't, she can't, she can't—not when she wants more than she can say, not when she's not sure of anything at all. Santana retracts and shrinks down, setting onto flat feet and looking immediately at the dirt. Her whole body flushes with heat and embarrassment.

When she chances a peek at Brittany, she finds Brittany wearing a curious expression, like she's just seen Santana for the first time.

After a second, Brittany knocks her elbow against Santana's and gestures for them to walk again, amiable and sweet, as always. She wears such a queer, secret smile that Santana can't help but wonder if Brittany would have liked it if Santana had kissed her.

(Santana has never had a friend before; there are so many things she doesn't know.)

Brittany doesn't seem to begrudge Santana for almost kissing her, at least.

(Santana resolves to try again later and musters all her bravery.)

(She feels awfully curious to know the difference between kissing and having someone kiss her and somehow suspects that finding the answer to her query will be the most important thing she does all day or all week.)

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana find the big top almost fully constructed once they reach it, with both the side canvas and roof in place and the underlying frames all mounted. When they poke their heads inside the tent, they immediately draw the attention of a detail of nearly twenty supes, all of them hard at work raising the last portions of the bleachers inside the tent.<p>

Hammers rap and booming male voices resound against the vast space, contrasting the incomparable quiet from which Brittany and Santana have just come. Somehow, the supes notice the girls right away—probably because they had expected someone to come with their coffee already. Immediately, Santana wonders if she and Brittany will keep up their game now that they have an audience.

They do.

As the men crowd around them, Brittany flashes Santana a cat-smile. In the next instant, Santana passes out the tin cups to the men, one by one, and Brittany begins to pour them their coffee as they approach her in a line, smiling and nodding politely when they thank her for the refreshment but saying nothing to them, even when one or two of them address her by name.

"Thank you kindly, Miss Pierce."

"Swell job, Brittany."

She just bites her lip and sneaks glances at Santana in her peripheral vision, a smile hidden at the corners of her mouth, so pretty and perfect that Santana thinks her own heart might collapse just from adoring Brittany so much.

No one expects Brittany and Santana to speak, so no one feels disappointed when they don't.

It takes nearly ten minutes for the men to finish their coffee once Brittany and Santana get it to them; they nurse their cups, leaning against their sledgehammers and sitting upon those bleachers they've already built, talking in murmurs to one another and looking haggard to a one, unshaven and with dark eyes. Brittany and Santana watch them from afar.

Of course, standing in the big top tent, side by side, Santana can't help but think of the last time she and Brittany visited this place together. She remembers the pillars of light, climbing the ladder, and the kiss—their first kiss—on the trapeze platform. When she looks over to see if maybe Brittany's thinking about the same thing, Santana finds Brittany grinning at her like she has a secret. Brittany bumps their hips together.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths.

_Hi_, Santana mouths back.

She feels silly and happy and perfect.

Once the supes finish their coffee, Santana and Brittany collect the dirtied cups from them and return to the mess pit, carrying Santana's basket between them, laughing but not aloud, all wrapped up in quiet and each other more than anything.

Normally, Santana would feel self-conscious, fooling in front of an audience, but since she and Brittany kept up with the game in front of the supes, they really can't do anything but keep up with it when they report back to Ma Jones, too—so fooling it is.

"Wash out the cups, and put them back in the chuck," Ma orders, waving her wooden spoon. "Then get your behinds back here so that I can set y'all to peeling these carrots for lunch."

Brittany and Santana nod in response to what Ma says to them, wearing close-lipped smiles and rocking on their heels. They must look like they're up to trouble because at that moment, Ma stops and glares at them. After a second of observation, she seems to catch their squirreliness. She glances between the two girls and quirks an eyebrow.

"Y'all think something's funny?" she asks.

Brittany and Santana shake their heads no, shoulders rattling with silent laughter for the brilliance of playing a secret game in plain view of someone who will never guess its rules.

For a brief second, Ma's expression flickers between confusion and annoyance, like she can't tell whether to beware Brittany and Santana's cheekiness or resent them for it, but then she seems to set in her resolve.

"You two had best not get up to any mischief while you're working in my kitchen!" she warns. "If I hear so much as a peep out of either of you—"

(She couldn't have chosen either a better or a worse thing to say.)

* * *

><p>Ma sends Brittany and Santana far away from her and her girls to work, banishing them and their silliness to one of the benches farthest away from the fire pit with two paring knives, ten carrots, an aluminum bucket, and strict instructions to not waste any time shared between them. Ma wants them to peel the carrot skins into the bucket so that she can use the peels to make soup stock later in the day; she warns the girls not to let the skins go on the ground or else.<p>

Brittany and Santana set down sidesaddle on the bench, facing one another, the bucket on the ground beside their feet and take another full minute to bridle their laughter before they finally manage to get to work. Even though Ma Jones exiled Brittany and Santana from her presence, she still watches them from across the way, making sure that they peel their carrots without creating a rumpus while she herself joins her girls shucking dried chickpeas over a barrel.

Watching Ma watch them, Santana starts to regrets making herself such a nuisance today, but she doesn't get deep enough into her thoughts to muster any real guilt before who should appear but none other than Sam Evans, whistling a song Santana that doesn't recognize and carrying not just one but one dozen dirty dandelions clutched behind his back where Santana can see them but Ma Jones can't yet.

(Just then, it occurs to Santana that Ma Jones likes a good nuisance every once in a while.)

"Samuel Evans," Ma says, standing up off her bench.

She feigns annoyance at the sight of him, but Santana can't help but notice the first traces of a smile appearing at the corners of her mouth, like the gold that gathers above the horizon just before sunrise.

(Ma Jones is really beautiful, and it's no wonder that Sam blushes whenever he and Ma get to talking.)

"I thought I told you to say out of my kitchen before lunch or I would have Mr. Adams leave you behind at the train depot for the first fool who'll take you on," Ma gripes, but there's no bite in her words at all—just sweet.

She stops a few steps in front of Sam and rests her hands on her hips, setting herself between Sam and the food that her girls prepare.

Sam doesn't care about food at the moment, though.

He peers over Ma's shoulder and tips his hat to her girls and then gives Ma the same courtesy. He's already done up in his full clown make up, bright colors all over his face, so he looks especially dramatic when he draws a deep breath, steeling himself, and then reveals the flowers from behind his back, extending them to Ma Jones with a flourish.

Before Ma can say anything, Sam blurts out, "Please don't be sore at me."

Ma pulls a face. "Sore at you?"

"For singing to you this morning on the wagon," Sam clarifies. His face falls a bit, "... and for giving you these flowers now... and for always stealing your biscuits."

He looks away from Ma, suddenly bashful, and Santana almost looks away from the both of them, feeling very much as if she's intruded on something private and nervous because she was the one who encouraged Sam to seek Ma's attention earlier today on the train. Her heartbeat speeds; she hasn't cut a carrot since Sam appeared in the mess.

Ma regards Sam seriously, wearing another one of her unreadable expressions. Santana thinks she might see surprise swim over Ma's face, but, if she does, she can hardly make it out before it darts away again, a minnow disappearing into the depths of a pond.

Ma snatches the flowers out of Sam's hand in one quick motion.

Sam looks up at her, breathless and waiting.

Once Ma has Sam's attention, she shakes her head. "If I'm ever not sore at you, that'll be the day that the good Lord comes on earth to reign," she says.

(It sounds so much like something else that Santana's cheeks heat at the sound of it.)

"Yes, ma'am," Sam says.

(It sounds so much like something else, too.)

For a second, Ma and Sam just stare at each other, she with a bouquet of dirty dandelions clutched at her waist, he with a lopsided grin under his frowning clown face paint. Ma's kitchen girls titter behind her, whispering to each other behind cupped hands, glancing between Sam and Ma as if they're a circus act in themselves.

"I'm going to put these flowers in a jar of water," Ma says slowly, "and once I do, you best be gone, and all my biscuits better be where I left them in the chuck, you hear?"

Sam grins, "Yes, ma'am."

Just then, something brushes Santana's leg, and Santana jolts.

Brittany.

At first, Santana thinks that the touch happens by accident, but then she glances down to find Brittany's ankle wrapped around her own, and then she glances up to find Brittany paying her more attention than anyone ever has before.

So many people look at Santana to scrutinize her and scour her out, but Brittany's look is so positively gentle that if it were a touch Santana knows that she would only feel the slightest whisper of it.

No one has ever regarded Santana with such fondness in her eyes before.

Santana can hardly register the look before it disappears, there and then gone once Brittany catches Santana staring back at her. A wide, wily smile lights Brittany's face, and the next thing Santana knows, Brittany brushes her ankle against Santana's again, knocking their feet together a little. Santana can't help it—she gasps aloud.

_Hey, darlin'_, Brittany mouths, grinning like she's won a prize.

In the next minute, Sam quits the mess pit, and Ma Jones resumes shucking chickpeas. The kitchen girls chatter with gossip, asking Ma Jones if she likes her _flow-ers_ and if maybe she'll sneak away from the kitchen to catch the matinee after lunch. Ma Jones tells them to hush up and then barks at Brittany and Santana from across the way to stop dawdling and peel the carrots, scaring them back to work.

With that admonishment, the girls work better than before; it suddenly feels as if they race toward some end. If anyone has ever peeled ten carrots faster than they do now, Santana can't believe it. Even Ma seems surprised when they return the bucket of vegetable waste and bushel of fresh-slicked carrots to her after only a quarter hour.

"I guess you're free to go," she tells them.

(The way she says it sounds almost like praise.)

Brittany doesn't wait to hear any more than that before linking her pinky finger through Santana's and tugging Santana to follow her. They have a thousand places they could go but only one thing to do. Santana's heart beats so loudly as they scamper away from the mess pit that she's certain Brittany hears it, even though Brittany runs a pace ahead of her.

They sprint through silence, still rapt in the game, attuned in their voicelessness to all the sounds, colors, and sensations outside themselves, attuned to each other like one would be to a favorite song playing, soft, beneath the babble of a crowd.

Santana can hear their heavy breathing against the humid air, their bare footfalls shushing over the long prairie dropseed grass, the jingling of the coin bracelet tied at her own ankle, the bugs, birds, and wind around them, the circus sounds everywhere. She breathes in wind and feels heat high in the back of her throat. She sees so much brightness everywhere: in Brittany's hair, bouncing just in front of her with Brittany's every movement, in the air, on the glaring halo of the white city, and in the lemon-flesh sun brilliant overhead.

All of these perceptions mount to something, reaching a crescendo just as the girls clatter to a stop outside Santana's tent.

(Somehow, Santana doesn't feel surprised to find them here at all.)

They're voiceless and breathless.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths.

_Hi_, Santana mouths back.

Brittany gives another tug to Santana's pinky finger, reeling Santana toward her until they have only a few inches of space between them. Brittany has that deep, familiar look in her eyes and that queer, secret smile on her face from before.

They don't have to speak for Santana to know exactly what the look means.

Santana's breath hitches in her throat, and her eyelids shutter closed just as Brittany leans into her, taking her face between two hands.

It's a different kind of kiss than they've ever kissed before: open as soon as it happens and pushing so deep, Brittany's mouth feels even hotter than the day and slick against Santana's. The smolder in Santana's belly turns over, surprising her, and she lets out a little whimper without realizing it.

"Oh."

Brittany smiles into her mouth at that and changes the direction of their kiss so that Santana's belly flip-flops. Their feet move beneath them, fumbling them inside Santana's tent. They push blindly through the flaps, connected at the mouth and with Brittany cupping Santana's face in her hands, her touch hot beneath Santana's jaw and just behind her ears.

Santana feels the kiss everywhere, not just on her mouth, and wonders if that isn't because she and Brittany have spent their whole morning tuning themselves to sensation, holding back their voices all to lead them to this moment. It's really not just one kiss anymore but rather a thousand different kisses sliding into one another, each one wet and deep and absolutely perfect.

Just as they stumble into the tent, Brittany's tongue slips into Santana's mouth. Brittany and Santana flirted with this newness when they kissed at the edge of the wood in Mankato, but it hadn't felt quite so charged then, so sloppy and velvet, lit like a fuse. Santana finds that she has to hold onto something or she'll fall and reaches for Brittany's hips, setting her grip just below Brittany's waist, pulling Brittany closer without even thinking about it. They almost trip the next two steps and end up on Santana's cot, sitting down sidesaddle, their feet tangled together in the meadow bluegrass, knees pressed up against each other.

"Oh."

This time it's Brittany, like setting down surprised her. Santana's heartbeat picks up, heavier than it's ever been before, until she can feel her own pulse everywhere. Her breath rebounds against Brittany's lips, voiced, and she shifts her head, deepening the kiss; she wants to feel closer to Brittany, to close all the space between them. Everything inside her rises to the surface and she shivers at the thrill of it.

The game has ended, spell broken.

"Brittany—," Santana whines, wanting more than she can say.

She needs more to hold, more to anchor her, or she'll just fly clean away.

"Santana," Brittany says back, deepening the kiss, her voice husky and low.

Just the sound of her speaking fuels the fire in Santana's belly and moves it lower inside Santana. Santana has never felt quite like this before, as vibrant as a string, her whole body tuned to Brittany's note. She tries to kiss the newness to Brittany, to write it out for her where they meet each other, like the measures of a song. Her thumbs press into Brittany's sides. She wants without knowing what she wants, exactly—just more and more and more and this.

"Santana, I—," Brittany stammers against Santana's mouth. "Santana, I have to tell you—"

"Brittany!"

The girls jolt.

The shout comes from outside the tent, outside this moment, and in a man's voice.

Santana and Brittany spring apart from one another, disconnecting at the lips and face and hips, hearts pounding somewhere up around their ears. They both look toward the door.

"Brittany!" the voice calls again, this time louder and moving closer to the tent.

Brittany scrambles off the cot with rabbit-scared movements. She glances between Santana and the door.

"That's my daddy," she says.

Her lips look darker than they usually do, and fuller, too; Santana wonders if she did that, kissing them. Santana doesn't know what to do or say, so she just stares at Brittany, awaiting her instructions. Everything blurs between the kissing and the shouting.

"I have to go," Brittany says, already moving toward the door.

Santana stands up and follows Brittany to the outdoors, addlebrained and confused, nervous without fully knowing why. They emerge from the tent into the blaring morning sunlight just in time to encounter Mr. Pierce passing by them, already clad in his buckskin circus costume but with his bandolier of knives nowhere in sight.

Before today, Santana had never seen Mr. Pierce up close.

Mr. Pierce is a tall man, of almost the same towering height as Finn Hudson, but he somehow doesn't seem it, on account of his burly build. He has blonde hair, the same shade and color as Brittany's, and boasts a three-day beard. His wears a fixed expression, permanently hangdog, and Santana can't help but notice the deep circles under his eyes, so dark they almost look like bruises.

Profound lines crease his brow, like dry runnels worn into the earth during a season without rain. He bears the same sun-tired look as a farmer who's spent his every day out of doors and carries with him the scents of cured leather, sour, and choking tobacco smoke.

If his daughter is all daylight, Mr. Pierce seems like a midday shadow. Though he and Brittany resemble each other, the real tell to their relation is their eyes—both cattish in shape and the same shade of startling, inimitable blue.

Mr. Pierce stops as soon as he sees Brittany and Santana duck out of the tent and they stop, too. He looks between the two girls, surprised to find them here and surprised to find them together. He obviously doesn't recognize Santana—why would he, having never met her?—because his face blanks at the sight of her.

(Not for the first time since arriving at the circus, Santana wishes that everything would just slow down.)

"Brittany," Mr. Pierce says, surprised. He squints at his daughter through the day brightness and takes another step toward her, stopping within a few feet of her.

"Sorry, Daddy," Brittany says, and Santana wonders what she's sorry for—for not hearing his calls right away or for something else?

Mr. Pierce furrows his brow, considering his daughter in a place where he didn't expect to find her. "Where have you been all morning?" he asks, his voice crackly, fissuring, like a dried corn husk crushed between two hands. He speaks with the full twang that Brittany's _darlin'_ only hints at.

Before Brittany can answer him, Mr. Pierce reaches out and snatches up Brittany's wrist, pulling her roughly toward him, away from Santana.

"I'm sorry, Daddy—," Brittany starts again, but Mr. Pierce doesn't wait for her to speak.

"We got work to do," Mr. Pierce reproves her. "You know that!" He jerks Brittany's wrist again.

Both Santana and Brittany flinch at his touch. Brittany diverts her eyes, looking to the ground and away from her father. She seems to shrink in that moment. Santana's heartbeat races for an entirely different reason than it did inside the tent.

(She tries not to think of the Tenderloin district because she really oughtn't to compare.)

"Yes, Daddy," Brittany says penitently, not daring to meet her father's eyes.

As Mr. Pierce starts to frog-march Brittany away from Santana's tent, Brittany looks back toward Santana, reluctant to go. Their eyes meet from across the way and Santana feels something hook inside her heart. She doesn't want Brittany to leave, and she knows that Brittany doesn't want to do it, either.

(The invisible string between them tugs, tugs, tugs.)

Mr. Pierce realizes that Brittany isn't following him and traces her gaze to Santana. The lines on his forehead deepen as he seems to really take Santana in for the first time. His expression clouds, unreadable, and then turns dark.

(Santana wonders how much he can see of her.)

(Brittany says Santana has no devils and that cards are only cards.)

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't know for how long she lingers outside her tent door before the mess bell rings out, calling her to lunch, startling from her thoughts about braids and silent games and kisses and the hard, hard look in Mr. Pierce's eyes as he led his daughter away.<p>

It doesn't surprise her when neither Brittany nor her father turns up for lunch, though it does upset her to think that Brittany will miss a second meal today on her account. Santana considers asking Ma Jones' permission to take Brittany a plate at her tent, but the warning bell rings before she can manage to do it. She hangs on the edge of the mess pit for a full minute before Ma Jones catches her at it.

"Girl, you best go get yourself ready for the show or Ken'll tan your yeller hide!" Ma chides. "Get on, now!"

And Santana has to go because rules are rules are rules.

It's only when Santana stops back at her tent to procure her peacock-colored knapsack and tambourine from her pack that she realizes that she hasn't seen Puck at all since she ran away from the mess pit last night after supper. For a moment, she wonders what he must think about her hiding away with Brittany all night and all morning. Has he searched for Santana at all? If he has, she hasn't known about it.

While she's at the tent, Santana takes a moment to wash her face and teeth and comb through her hair with her horse-bristle brush, breaking through the kinks until her locks start to feel less like cotton floss and more like old silk. She straightens her costume and reties her sashes at her waist, breathing out long breaths between pursed lips. She doesn't know why she feels so flustered, like she left something undone or as if her body were a rung bell, still resonant with its last toll.

She makes it to the midway with ten minutes to spare and finds Ken already waiting for her outside her booth, wearing the same disapproving scowl as always. He grumbles to her about not making trouble and minding her manners, and Santana just nods, hoping that she won't have to read any cards today, arranging her deck upon the table and stashing her tambourine underneath her chair.

Considering that Cherokee isn't any bigger than St. James, Santana had expected to draw a similarly sized crowd here to the one she entertained yesterday.

No such luck.

Within two minutes of the circus fair opening to the public, nearly one-hundred and eighty souls flock to Santana's booth. As more and more patrons queue up in front of her, Santana feels increasingly nauseous. After only five minutes, her audience swells to include over two-hundred people, stretching out so far that Santana can't see the faces of everyone standing before her—only hear their exuberant chatter, with little snatches of conversation popcorning up here and there.

"—predicted his death and he died not five hours later!"

"They say he left a fortune behind and—!"

"—swears up and down that she's the real deal!"

"—said she sold her soul to the Devil so that she could read cards just like they was books—"

Apparently, the people of Cherokee already know all about how Santana performed in St. James, never mind state lines or the fact that nearly one-hundred and fifty miles separate the two towns from each other.

(Santana never sold her soul to anyone.)

(The Devil has always owned her without striking bargain to make it that way at all.)

They're here for tarot readings, Santana knows it.

Oh God. She sinks down low in her chair and thinks through what Brittany told her last night under the open stars—that Santana didn't kill anybody, that cards are just cards, and that everyone makes his own choices, not fate—repeating Brittany's words to herself as her grandmother would the old-fashioned Church Spanish of a prayer. Santana tries to calm herself, to consider the situation logically and not worry until she has a reason to do it.

But then her first patron arrives.

He's a boy, probably a year or so younger than Santana herself, but dressed more finely than any of the men in his and Santana's immediate vicinity.

Whereas most of the fellows Santana can see in front of her today have come to the circus clad in farm duds—coveralls and dusty Strauss denim—this young gentleman dons a handsome navy double-breasted jacket with a stiff collar, a green-and-gold pinstriped waistcoat, a silken aubergine cravat, pegtop trousers, yellow gloves, and a violet boutonnière. He wears his velvet hat tipped rakishly over his forehead and seems to like it when the people around him notice that his cufflinks, pocket watch, and tiepin glint with pure gold.

Though probably no older than seventeen or eighteen at most, the boy is already tall, stalk-thin, but with broad shoulders; by the looks of him, he hasn't quite grown into his stature yet and may well one day fill out. He boasts what Santana can only call a shrewd face and wears a condescending smirk that gives him the appearance of someone squinting through bright sunlight. He saunters up to Santana's table, hands stuffed into his pockets, chest thrown out in front of him.

"I hear you have quite the reputation reading cards for young millionaires, gypsy," the boy says, by way of greeting, sitting down in the chair before Santana invites him to do so. He smirks at her as if she is an amusing item in a newspaper entertainment column. "Why don't you impress me?"

Santana's heart stops.

Now she has a reason to worry.

Despite all her trying, Santana can't help but think of Mr. Hammond, and not just of him, but of Mr. Fabray, Papa, Abuela, and the old gardener, Mr. Bradley, all in turn. Though Mr. Fabray was still alive the last Santana had heard, all the rest of the persons for whom Santana has read are dead, and if this boy persists in making Santana read for him, then he'll soon be dead, too.

In all honesty, Santana doesn't like this boy at all, even from their brief interaction. There is no question as to which one of the seven great sins is his vice; the way he looks down his nose at Santana as if she's some fascinatingly dirty curio irritates her to the point where if there were no such thing as rules, she would have slapped him on the cheek the instant he set eyes on her.

But still, no matter how he annoys her, Santana doesn't wish the boy dead.

Apparently, she takes too long answering him.

"Gypsy," the boy says in his same drawling voice, "perhaps you didn't hear me: my fortune will be the most important one you read at this little fair, no matter who comes after me. After all, it's not every day that you get to entertain the district attorney's son." He sneers at Santana from across the table, eyes tracing up from where her hands tremble on the table to where her mouth hangs slightly open. He looks entirely amused at her. His lips curl with ugly pride. "So entertain me," he says.

Immediately, Santana searches the crowd for Ken, and, sure enough, she finds him hovering just beyond the young man's shoulder, his face several different shades of red and purple all at once. He glares at Santana, ready to call her all kinds of nigger and twist her arm if she should fail him today.

Santana's chest clenches, and her hand shakes as she reaches for her deck. She swallows and swallows, but her throat won't stay wet. Visions of overturned horse buggies and the Park Avenue streetcar fill her mind. If she reads the cards, she'll deal Death; if she deals Death, the boy in front of her will die.

She barely manages to break the deck and pass it to the boy.

"W-will you please shuffle?" she asks, shuddering so violently that she can scarcely speak.

The boy gives her a cocky nod and takes the cards, riffling them with expert ease, bridging them without ever taking his eyes from Santana. He seems to delight in her nervousness and leans back in his chair, his legs crossed dandily in front of him. The boy doesn't regard Santana with the same thirstiness as Puck or as wolfishly as the supes on the train but nevertheless seems predatory—like the cat who wants to catch a mouse but has no intention to eat it.

Once he finishes with the cards, Santana asks him, "Will you please cut the deck into three parts?" and he does.

Santana feels bile rising in the back of her throat, and she wonders if she'll make it through this reading without being sick. Her heartbeat rises until it pulses in her temples and around her ears. She can't stop swallowing, but can't swallow, either. Everything seems too bright and too loud. She can't keep from shaking.

The boy hands her the first stack and she draws the top card from it. "Th-this represents y-you," she chokes, holding up the Seven of Swords and then setting it on the table, directly in front of the boy.

"Does it, now?" the boy says lazily, extending the two remaining card stacks to Santana so that she can set them in their places.

Except she doesn't.

She drops them.

In one second, the boy offers up the two stacks to Santana, and she reaches for them. In the next second, a tremor runs through her hands and her fingers slip; the cards flutter down, raining over the table and into the grass, graceful as multihued moths' wings, too heavy to fly away on the breeze but too light to stay put as they fall. Some of them land in Santana's lap, others at her ankles. The crowd around the gazebo gasps and Santana starts, so utterly surprised that tears spring to her eyes as soon as she realizes what's wrong.

"Why you clumsy nigger—!" Ken starts in on her, snatching out at Santana from across the table, like he intends to pick her up by the scruff of her neck and beat her like a naughty cat.

He doesn't get the chance to say any more than that, though.

Just then, another shout rings out across the midway pitch. Everyone in Santana's audience turns to look for the source of the commotion. From where she sits, Santana can't see anything but the crowd, but she can hear the shouting, plain enough.

"Turn away from this place of sin! This is the grounds of the Prince of Lies! This is a place of evil!"

"Did not just yesterday this same circus put forth a malediction come from Hell itself? Are they not soothsayers and sorcerers here, all of them with devils!"

"They'll lead you speedily down to Hell with their fiendish tricks!"

"Leave the circus or rot in Hell!"

Yesterday in St. James, the circus hosted one preacher on the midway. Today in Cherokee, the circus seems to have attracted a crowd of at least four preachers, if not more whom Santana cannot yet see. The crowd around Santana's booth shifts, anxious, looking between Santana and the yet-unseen preachers condemning her and her employment on the midway. Santana's stomach tightens; she feels sicker than ever.

"In the name of Jesus Christ, we would like to invite any damned soul who works for this circus to repent of his sins and be saved! Renounce the circus and all its wickedness! We come prepared to cast out devils, even as it is written,

_And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain maiden possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by a soothsaying:_

_The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shows unto us the way of salvation._

_And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour._

Repent, sinners, and accept Jesus as your Lord! Repent or be damned!"

Though this voice purports to want to save her, Santana has seldom felt more hated in her whole life. The sheer rancor in the preachers' words makes Santana wish she could sink down into the earth where no one could see her.

The only good thing to come from the intrusion is that both the boy in the chair in front of Santana and Ken seem to have forgotten about the reading and the spilled cards; the boy stands from his seat, using his height to see over the crowd toward the source of all the hollering, and Ken releases Santana from his grasp, pushing his way through the throng toward the midway, presumably to detain the preachers from their trespassing.

Ken isn't the only one to confront the preachers.

Soon, Mr. Adams' lion's roar bellows out over the crowds.

"Take 'em out, boys!"

The sounds of scuffling fill the air; the crowd around Santana contracts and then expands, huddling together and then fanning out in response to whatever happens in front of them. Indistinct yelling echoes around Santana's gazebo and people jostle. The moment seems louder and brighter than ever. Santana sinks down into her chair again and cowers where she sits, gripping onto the tablecloth so tightly that her knuckles turn white.

"I'll have you all arrested, to a one! Off with you! Sheriff!"

A loud whistle shrieks above the ruckus and Santana feels it all the way to her spine. She doesn't know if not seeing all the proceedings up close makes the situation better or worse; she can't figure out if she ought to thank the preachers for interrupting her reading or hate them for hating her in return.

(Santana shakes worse than ever.)

* * *

><p>It seems like the only thing to do is pick up the cards—after the crowd starts to break up; after the sheriff tells the preachers to skedaddle or he'll issue fines to all of them; after Ken and Mr. Adams assure the midway that the show will go on and then walk away with their heads pushed together, talking business as they go; after the district attorney collects his son and tells him they won't stay for the matinee because they have other affairs to which to attend.<p>

Santana stoops, pulse pounding in her ears, and plucks each card from the grass with fumbling fingers. Her breath flutters and her hands and wrists still quake. She moves slowly, the way one does after a hard fall.

(In a way, she does feel fallen.)

* * *

><p>Ken isn't around to drag Santana to the backstage area when the show bell rings, but he is there the second Santana rounds the big top tent, standing on a bench bordering the backstage area, facing a sizable crowd of circus performers. On first glance, Ken resembles a huckster about to hawk his wares in a market; his audience doesn't seem precisely ready to buy from him, though.<p>

From the looks of it, Ken has called both backstage groups together, so as to address them all at once. Nearly two-hundred people gather around him, the men clad in their knights' shifts, some of the women with scarves tied around their heads.

Ken hollers for the lot of them to quiet down, but they don't heed him right away; Santana discerns gossip about the preachers on the midway circulating through the rabble. A few people grumble about gillies, and Santana feels strange listening to it, like a child who happens upon an adult conversation when she doesn't mean to do it and suddenly begins to understand something hard about the world based on what she overhears.

Mrs. Schuester stands on the edge of the throng, several of her seamstresses all in a row behind her. The girls all carry wicker baskets filled with either wildflowers or an assortment of fabric scraps slung over their arms. As soon as Mrs. Schuester sees Santana arriving at the backstage area, she gestures Santana over to her side.

Before Santana can either ask questions or protest, Mrs. Schuester preemptively shushes her, pulling her in close by her wrist and setting a hand on either side of her face, steadying her. For a second, Santana falters, uncertain as to what Mrs. Schuester intends to do to her and nervous about her and Mrs. Schuester's sudden new proximity to each other. Santana holds her breath, looking anywhere but directly into Mrs. Schuester's mad eyes and wishes, as she so often does, for invisibility.

(If it were Brittany holding her face like this, Santana knows that they would kiss.)

(Since Mrs. Schuester holds her in place, Santana wonders if Mrs. Schuester won't slap her.)

Quick as a snap, Mrs. Schuester reaches into the baskets of one of the girls at her side, snatching up a length of blue fabric—a kerchief—and situating it over Santana's head, tucking it into itself to form a veil. Mrs. Schuester cinches the fabric so tightly that it squeezes Santana's jaw and then hums to herself, pleased with her own work, though not with Santana, who disappoints Mrs. Schuester, no matter what she does.

"Stash your things under a bench and take this," Mrs. Schuester snips, plucking up a sprig of Wild Lupine from one of her girls' baskets and thrusting it toward Santana as if she finds both flower and girl equally distasteful. "It's your favor, and you'll give it to one of the knights after the sketch."

Santana opens her mouth to ask to which knight she ought to give the flower and how she'll know when the sketch is over, having never practiced it before, but Mrs. Schuester shushes Santana again and gestures sharply toward Ken, who has finally succeeded in silencing the company and seems about to make a speech.

Mrs. Schuester gives Santana a little shove, pushing her in amongst the other assembled performers. Santana wriggles into the throng, next to Blaine the trilby tramp and some of the Sylvesteri riders.

"Listen up!" Ken barks. "Here's the way it's gonna work! We'll let our equestrian knights in first, then the rest of you fellas. You'll have five minutes to scrap and tussle and you best make sure that the crowd can see your swords. After that, we'll ring the bell, and the ladies ought to come in and dance in Ring One and Ring Three. The black knights will make a run for you—"

At this, several of the fellows in the crowd, who wear black shifts with black crosses, shout out like ruffians, waving their fists in approval.

"—and you ladies ought to scream and step back, in turn. Then the blue knights—"

The fellows in the blue shifts cheer, answering their opposition.

"—will come around to defend you. They'll stage a mock battle for another five minutes. Once the music changes, the knights will face the ladies, and the ladies will give out their favors. Make sure the crowd can see you do it, too. Then the music will change, and we'll start up with the processional again, same as usual.

If the elephants come in and you're still in the rings, you've waited too long, and you'll have to join up with the processional until you can sneak out the back. Once you make it outside the tent, get your shifts and scarves back to Missus Schuester pronto! We'll have three minutes before the Changs are up. Mr. Adams wants no foulin' today, so stick to your marks or I'll let Mr. St. James' lions have their ways with you! Right, now, fellas, over to the flaps!"

Ken hops down from his bench and gestures for the knights to follow him toward the entrance to the big top. For a second, Santana thinks she sees Puck amongst the rabble, but she can't be sure, as there are so many shoulders and heads blocking her view.

It's only when some of the women in the backstage area move in addition to the men that it suddenly occurs to Santana that Ken had assembled the whole company together for his speech; some of the women make an exodus to the other backstage area—the one closest to the menagerie.

Brittany might be with them.

Just thinking of Brittany gives Santana a surge of energy. She moves on impulse, shoving between the equestrienne riders on either side of her with nary a sorry and then scrambling around the backstage fire pit so that she can jump up onto the same bench where Ken stood to address the company.

Santana perches on tiptoe, looking out over the heads of the women in her backstage area, the men crowded at the door to the big top, and, further down the line, the other women moving toward their backstage area, holding her breath as she counts each kerchief, as one would while counting stars.

Though Santana sees the Famed Giantess of Akron, some of the equestrienne coterie, and several other performers whom she doesn't recognize on sight, she finds no sign of Brittany.

(Something inside her shrinks.)

Santana doesn't know where Brittany normally spends her time leading up to performances because, aside from yesterday when Brittany found Santana sniffling after Mr. Hammond's reading, Santana has never spent time with Brittany leading up to a show. Santana had thought that since Brittany never occupies her own backstage area, closest to the dressing tents, Brittany must necessarily occupy the backstage area closest to the menagerie, but now Santana wonders if she has perhaps been mistaken.

Is there some other place where Brittany could hide herself, prior to a show?

Santana sits down on the bench, hanging her feet over it in the direction of the second backstage area and setting her peacock-colored knapsack and tambourine on the ground beneath her, as per Mrs. Schuester's instructions. She twirls the twining purple stem of the Wild Lupine between her fingers, rolling it over and over again and wondering to where it is that Brittany goes whenever she's away.

The fact that Santana hasn't seen Brittany since before lunch piques Santana's nerves. Has Brittany had anything to eat since the biscuit on the train? Did her father scold her for skiving off her morning obligations to him to be with Santana? What did Brittany want to tell Santana before her father called her away? Santana worries at the flower in her hand, rolling its stem between her fingers until she twists it nearly to breaking.

"What the hell are you doing?"

A man as large and unsubtle as Ken ought not to be able to sneak up on anyone, but he does just that and Santana nearly falls off her bench because of it—or at least she would fall off her bench if Ken didn't yank her off it first, roughing her as he scrapes her up and over the bench lip.

The motion hurts and leaves the backs of Santana's knees and thighs throbbing where they rub against the wood. Santana scrambles to readjust her skirt over her bare legs so as to preserve her modesty but finds it difficult to do so with Ken holding her at the elbow.

"The bell rang two minutes ago! You missed your cue!" Ken bellows, shaking Santana to her feet. He jerks her elbow so that she spins to face him. "Are you deaf and stupid or just stupid?"

The backstage area around them stands mostly deserted, with all of the knights and ladies gone. Only Mrs. Schuester and her girls, Mrs. Evans and a few of the other ladies who don't perform, and the little children playing at the aperture of the tent remain. Santana doesn't know how she failed to hear the bell. Heat rises to her cheeks.

(Of course, Santana never means to make trouble, but it somehow seems to follow her wherever she goes.)

Though Santana doesn't care one whit for Ken—he's repulsive, crude, and abuses Santana constantly—Santana still doesn't like to anger him or to ruin his show. Ken doesn't seem to know that, though. He seems to think that Santana meant to purposefully sabotage the knight sketch and wears hatred hot upon his blotchy face for her.

Santana grimaces and tries not to meet Ken's eye, not wanting him to further misread her. She glances away across the backstage, and, in so doing, espies a horrible sight: Mrs. Schuester stalking over to investigate the commotion, skirts hitched to ankle-height so as to allow for proper stomping.

_Oh God._

As if it weren't bad enough for Santana to have Ken shout at her, now Mrs. Schuester will join him. Santana cringes and tries to free herself from Ken's grasp but to no avail. Ken holds Santana so tightly that his grip will likely bruise her skin.

Mrs. Schuester draws to within a yard of Santana and Ken, her mad eyes wide, expression appalled, but though Santana expects to hear one thing from Mrs. Schuester, she actually hears another.

"For Pete's sake, Ken!" Mrs. Schuester snips in a hot, furious whisper. She snatches at Santana's free elbow, pulling her away from Ken like a little girl would a rag doll from her mean older brother. Once she has Santana in her clutches, Mrs. Schuester yanks the kerchief from Santana's head, holding it in her clenched fist as if she's mad at it as well as Ken and Santana, too. "Stop shouting at that girl or the patrons in the top row will hear you at it!"

For a second, Mrs. Schuester's grip on Santana slackens. and Santana takes the opportunity to extricate herself from Mrs. Schuester's hold. She stumbles a few steps away, aware that she doesn't have permission to exit the scene before either Ken or Mrs. Schuester finishes scolding her but also hardly eager to stick around for her punishment.

To Santana's surprise, Mrs. Schuester doesn't scold her and doesn't allow Ken to do so, either.

"She's already missed the cue, Ken, and there's nothing you can do for it. No one in there will miss her. They have enough girls for every knight to have two flowers, if he likes! They don't need Santana or Brittany on stage."

Ken grumbles something in response to Mrs. Schuester's chastisement, but Santana doesn't process what he says.

Mrs. Schuester just said Brittany's name. She just said that Brittany wouldn't perform in the knight sketch.

Ken waddles away from Santana and Mrs. Schuester, fed up with Mrs. Schuester's interference and threatening to have Mr. Adams sack Santana for what must be the third or five-hundredth times since Santana joined the circus. Mrs. Schuester gives Santana a sharp look.

"Don't miss your own act," she says acidly, holding up a warning finger to Santana's face.

Santana still holds her flower, almost crushed within her hand.

(She won't give it to a knight.)

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

><p>Santana performs. Brittany doesn't.<p>

The gypsies take the stage together—Puck spares Santana a troubled look when he finds her after the procession but remains strangely silent as they wait to enter the big top together, Rachel at their sides—and, after they perform, Santana hangs at the aperture of the tent, breathless and hoping to finally see Brittany.

When it comes time for Will the Ringmaster to call the knife thrower and his daughter to the floor, he doesn't pause or look confused under the lights. He smiles his false performing smile and announces the elephants to the crowd, making no mention of a missing act. Methuselah, Deborah, and Bathsheba enter the tent in file, their driver at their heels, and the audience cheers, delighted at the sight of them.

A pang goes through Santana's heart.

(The audience applauds, not knowing what they're missing.)

* * *

><p>The moment the matinee ends, Santana sets out to find Brittany, feeling increasingly baffled and increasingly uneasy as she considers why Brittany missed the show. It isn't unusual for Brittany and her father to forego lunch with the company—in fact, Santana has never seen Brittany eat a meal in the mess pit the whole time Santana has traveled with the circus—but it is very unusual for both Brittany and her father to miss a performance, as far as Santana knows.<p>

Santana sets off from the big top, back toward the residential camp, passing by the dressing tents and midway pitch, hopeful that if Brittany and her father weren't present for the performance, they must have remained inside their own tent, the location of which Santana now knows exactly, thanks to Rachel Berry.

So many things about today confuse Santana, from the simple logistics surrounding Brittany's perpetual scarcity around camp to why it is that Mrs. Schuester just fended off Ken on Santana's behalf to how both rules and dirty dandelions can exist in the same world.

Not only do the happenings surrounding Santana confound her, but the happenings inside her own self confound her, too; she knows it must be childish to think it, but she can't help but suspect that no two friends have ever kissed in quite the same way as she and Brittany have before, so perfectly and wildly.

(Even the kisses Santana has read about between friends in books seem dull compared to Brittany's kisses.)

Really, Santana doesn't know what to make of Brittany's kisses, except to think that she wants more of them and that she would still like to repay them herself, kissing Brittany and not only receiving Brittany's kisses. The more she thinks about kissing Brittany, the more Santana's mind muddles, thrown off by the mad beat of her heart. She feels she doesn't understand something about the kisses but also that she understands them perfectly.

Santana thinks of Brittany's father, taking Brittany away after Brittany and Santana kissed and kissed and kissed, and, when she does, her stomach turns over. She knows that there are rules and that Mr. Pierce probably cares about them much more than his daughter does. Mr. Pierce looked so stormy when he dragged Brittany away with him. To where did he take Brittany after they left Santana at her tent?

(Brittany had nearly told Santana another secret before her father called for her.)

Santana's thoughts blur, all constellations and hand games, stolen biscuits and silence, kisses and coarseness, missed circus acts, and rules, rules, rules.

She passes the sideshow tent and cuts under the colored billboards, emerging into the residential side of camp along the south edge of what Santana recognizes as Mr. Adams' business tent, which has its place in the same neighborhood as the trisection of tents where Santana first spoke to Brittany. It stands not far off from the place where the Berry, Evans, Schuester, and Pierce families all make their habitation.

Santana intends to go straight to Brittany's tent and to call for Brittany whether she thinks that Mr. Pierce will be there with Brittany or not, but she doesn't make it that far before she happens upon someone else.

Quinn Fabray.

Quinn sits cross-legged upon the grass in the deep, indigo shadow of Mr. Adams' business tent, her back leaned against the tent, probably supported at a pole. In her lap, Quinn holds a novel, clad in thatched, orange cloth, which she only pretends to read. According to the title written in gold thread on the spine, the book is called _Middlemarch_, a novel Santana has seen listed in the Grolier Club catalogue, but which Santana never read while she lived in the bachelor cottage, for some reason or another.

Santana knows that Quinn only pretends to read the book because Quinn's pretty, hazel eyes stare straight ahead of her and don't scan over the open pages in her lap at all. Quinn sits entirely still and seems almost not to breathe.

She's eavesdropping.

Quinn Fabray is eavesdropping on the conversation going on inside the business tent.

Santana stops in her tracks. Inside the tent, she distinctly hears Mr. Adams' lion's voice in rapt discussion with Mr. Fabray's lazy drawl.

"Now, Jonah, you know I just want her taken care of," Mr. Fabray says, his words plain, even from without the tent. "I've already got my Frannie married off to one of the fellows from my company, a bright, young gentleman with a secure future in front of him—"

"—just as Arthur has a secure future in front of him," Mr. Adams says calmly. "He's my only son, Russell, and his name is already on the marquee. Everything I have will go to him upon my death. He and your Lucy will never want for anything."

"Even with his frail health?" Mr. Fabray counters.

"His health is good now," Mr. Adams says quietly. "He's been treated by the best physicians, and though he hasn't the use of his legs, he's well enough to enjoy his life—aren't you, my boy?"

A new voice joins the conversation.

"Yes, sir. Very much, sir."

The voice sounds light and gentle, hesitant and almost painterly. It is that of a very young man, not yet worn into any sort of depth.

When Santana shifts where she stands just slightly, two things happen at once in response to her movement.

The first thing that happens is that Santana gets a peek inside the business tent through a small slit in its canvas wall and finds the owner of the young voice, a boy probably just a year or two younger than Santana herself, seated in a most peculiar wheeled chair with a back and sides woven from rattan.

A flannel blanket covers the boy's legs, despite the heat of the day. He wears square spectacles and appears rather small in stature. He crosses his hands in his lap and hangs back from his father and Mr. Fabray, who pace in the center of the room.

The boy has a long face, like Mr. Adams', and big and almost pretty eyes bright behind his spectacles. He has dark hair that seems determined to sweep as it will over his forehead, despite the fact that someone has obviously meticulously combed it. His dress is fine and gentlemanly, though hardly as flamboyant as his father's. He wears a pale green sack coat, no tie, and his shirt collar done up to the top button, with no hat atop his head.

All in all, he seems very meek and more like an accessory to his father's conversation than an actual part of it.

The second thing that happens is that, when Santana moves, Quinn Fabray notices her presence for the first time and looks up, startled.

For an instant, fear flashes across Quinn's features, as if she thinks that because Santana has discovered her spying outside her father's conversation, Santana will somehow rat her out or get her into trouble for eavesdropping, but then, in the next instant, Quinn's fear recedes as she seems to reason through the situation in her mind.

The fact of the matter is that Santana can't very well alert Quinn's father and Mr. Adams to Quinn's presence without alerting them to her own presence, as well. If they won't smile upon Quinn spying on them, they certainly won't smile on Santana spying on them, either. Both Quinn and Santana have come to a place where they ought not to be. Consequently, neither one of them can reveal the trespass of the other without revealing her own trespass, in turn.

Quinn seems to calm once she realizes as much.

Quinn meets Santana's eyes from across the way, holding Santana's gaze, and, as Quinn does so, Santana finds that, for once, she can read Quinn quite easily: Quinn's father and Mr. Adams stand inside their tent, discussing Quinn's future in the same breath as their business arrangements. They might have her marry Arthur Adams, the circus owner's son, a boy who hasn't the use of his legs. Quinn must know what they decide about her.

She must.

Santana nods very slowly at Quinn because she thinks she understands.

(Puck decided what lies to tell about Santana.)

(How much choice did she have but to consent to his lies or starve?)

A new emotion passes behind Quinn's pretty, hazel eyes—not fear or even satisfaction at knowing that Santana cannot betray her but rather something almost like gratitude.

"You can take the engagement as my bond, Russell. My son's well-being rests as much upon the successful completion of this deal as does your darling daughter's. They're well-matched, Russell. They're very well-matched, indeed."

* * *

><p>Santana finds that she can't force herself to linger outside the business tent any longer than she already has. It hadn't been her intention to overhear Mr. Adams' and Mr. Fabray's conversation at all; she had only happened upon it by accident.<p>

_I'm sorry_, Santana mouths to Quinn, apologizing for more than she can say.

Santana draws a breath, jarring herself back into being instead of only listening and quits the scene in a rush, leaving Quinn behind. _Middlemarch_ remains unread in Quinn's lap, and Quinn's expression remains lost, like that of the girl in the fairytale waiting for the wolves.

(Santana wonders if Quinn might understand her sorry even better than Santana does herself.)

Rounding the business tent, Santana happens into the alley where the family tents stand, hurrying over the grass until she stands outside of Brittany's tent. She holds her breath and listens.

Santana hears nothing from inside the tent—not the low murmur of conversation or the scuffling of someone moving belongings about or any noise that would indicate a human presence, either sleeping or awake.

She steels herself. "Brittany?" she calls.

No reply.

"Brittany?" Santana says again, feeling immensely stupid and nervous, hoping that if Brittany is inside her tent, her father isn't there with her.

Santana waits, but no one answers her.

A feeling of dread rings through Santana's belly. The longer she goes without finding Brittany, the less and less she can stand it. She feels immensely worried, though she can't say why, outside of the fact that she doesn't like the way Brittany's father looked, leading Brittany away from her tent. Neither Mr. Adams nor Ken nor even Will the Ringmaster seemed to mind that Brittany and her father missed the matinee show. Did Mr. Adams give the knife thrower and his daughter permission to leave the camp for some reason, then?

Santana decides to search the mess area for Brittany, wondering if maybe she and her father took time to eat, since Brittany at least didn't get the chance to do so before.

Santana only makes it as far as the chuck before she happens upon not Brittany but Puck.

"Ladybird!"

(Santana has seldom felt more disappointed to hear Puck call her, except for maybe when he interrupted her and Brittany's kiss inside the big top tent.)

Puck comes toward Santana from the direction of the mess pit, still clad in his circus costume but with his black Stetson hat also atop his head. He seems, on the whole, displeased, and walks with some frustration in his stride.

"Where have you been, ladybird?" he says, stopping just in front of Santana. "Now, I know I had to go off with the hostlers last night, and I'm sorry I didn't warn you I'd be gone, but that's no reason to hold a cat's grudge against me. You got along just fine this morning without me, so why pout, ladybird? I didn't mean no harm, and you scared me half to death, not turning up until just before show time!"

Santana has only the slightest idea what Puck's talking about. She wonders if a "hostler" isn't some type of supe.

"You were with whom?" she asks, confused.

"With the hostlers," Puck repeats. "You know, the fellas who ride ahead of the circus to spread the word and start the camp?"

Santana didn't know, but now she supposes that she does.

In considering the matter, it suddenly makes sense to her that Puck didn't seem to mind her staying out all night with Brittany. If he himself never returned to his and Santana's tent after the show or only did for a brief while, then of course he didn't notice Santana missing from it either.

Santana doesn't know what he means about her holding a grudge against him for his absence, though.

(Santana doesn't mind that Puck took leave from their tent last night at all.)

"I didn't mean to," Santana says truthfully. As it so often does when she speaks to Puck, her voice comes out sounding harsh, with some bite to it.

Puck shakes his head, "Done is done now, ladybird. I just don't want you mad at me anymore. I want to make it up to you. Will you take a stroll with me?"

He extends his elbow to her and smiles his idiot smile.

Taking a stroll with Puck is the last thing Santana wants to do right now.

Santana still hasn't found Brittany, and if Puck leads Santana off to God-knows-where, Santana might never find Brittany before the next show at all. Honestly, Santana doesn't feel angry with Puck in the least, so she doesn't need him to make it up to her with a promenade. She just wishes he would let her be so she could continue her search uninterrupted.

She knows she can't just dismiss Puck without a good reason to do so, though.

"You really don't have to do that," she demurs, looking at her toes and hoping that Puck will disappear once she glances up again.

No such luck.

"But I want to do it," Puck says, locking Santana's arm through his without another word about it. "I've missed you, ladybird. Haven't you missed me?" He smirks his devilish smirk.

Santana hasn't missed Puck at all.

(Santana misses Brittany.)

Santana can't very well admit to Puck that she hasn't thought about him much at all, even after not seeing him since suppertime last night, except for during the matinee today. She sighs, feeling that familiar trapped feeling. She and Puck tell the same lies, nowadays.

"Where do you want to walk?" she asks, not caring one whit about his answer, unless it happens to somehow include finding Brittany.

"There's someplace I want to show you," Puck says excitedly.

"Okay," Santana consents, not knowing what to do otherwise.

Puck hums a happy note and starts to lead Santana west of the white city, toward the big top in the distance. He seems quite pleased to have Santana with him, but Santana can't say that she reciprocates the sentiment. She doesn't despise Puck in the same way she does Ken, but she certainly doesn't enjoy spending time with him when she doesn't have to do it.

Really, there's nothing wrong with Noah Puckerman, as far as circus boys go, but Santana Lopez just can't fuss about him.

* * *

><p>Santana fusses about Brittany all the way to the big top—which, as it turns out, is exactly the place that Puck wants to show her.<p>

Puck peels back a flap of the tent along the same aperture where Santana often watches the shows in the backstage area and gestures Santana inside.

"After you, ladybird," he says, bowing a little like a coach chauffeur. He tips his hat to Santana and grins his devil grin at her, buzzing with a kind of energy to which Santana seems strangely immune, at least when it comes to him.

They find the big top empty, devoid of patrons as well as workers, the space vast and unoccupied. The same three pillars of light Brittany showed to Santana in Mankato shine from ceiling to floor, soft white and spangled with dust motes. Santana feels a brief flood of happiness, remembering the lights and where they led her, but then she remembers her present company and a strange loneliness overtakes her.

(She would feel lonely amidst even one thousand pillars of light and with a thousand people, if Brittany weren't there with her, too.)

"It's pretty as a picture in here, isn't it, ladybird?" Puck says reverently. "Want to see it from up above?" He gestures to the ladder leading up to the trapeze platform.

Santana's heart sinks.

Puck doesn't seem to realize that Brittany took Santana onto the platforms when he found them in the big top the other day in Mankato. He thinks that this adventure will be new for Santana, then, and that he can impress Santana now in the way that Brittany did the other day. He doesn't realize that he isn't offering Santana anything new.

Once again, he is that little boy of whom Santana sometimes feels fond, his countenance light and movements untroubled.

If Santana tells him she's already seen the big top from the platform, she'll hate herself for it, so she doesn't do so.

"Sure," she says weakly.

(Santana tries never to disappoint anyone who has provided care for her.)

Santana soon finds herself perched on the ladder, Puck situated just below her. The ladder actually proves much easier to climb barefooted than it did when Santana surmounted it wearing shoes. It also intimidates Santana less now that she has already conquered it once.

Puck mutters encouragement to Santana all the way to the platform, but she doesn't answer him, too focused on her climbing to pay him much attention, too focused on the task at hand to mind anything else. Even though she feels far less fearful to climb the ladder now than she did at first, Santana still moves slowly as she climbs, for safety's sake, the muscles straining in her arms. She manages to make her ascent without slipping once, for her carefulness. Each time she reaches for a rung, she finds it there and stable.

Once she surmounts the top of the ladder, she heaves herself onto the deck, sliding onto it on her belly. She breathes heavily and rights herself, sitting up. Puck joins her a second later, grinning.

"What do you think, ladybird?" he asks proudly, as if he had invented the place himself. He gestures out over the empty big top like a king showing his kingdom to an ally. Colors play upon the pillars of light, winking out in prisms over the expanse.

"It's swell," Santana answers quietly.

Of course, Santana can't but think of Brittany, sitting in the place where they first kissed and where Santana felt that Brittany truly was her friend for the first time. She still can't imagine why Brittany, the girl who talks to elephants and who knows all the best light at the circus, would enjoy her company, but she feels grateful to her bones for it. She's never met anyone who interests her quite as much as Brittany does or anyone who seems to abide her quite as readily as Brittany does.

In the next minute, Puck starts to prattle on about how he discovered this place one day while helping the supes put up the canopy and how, ever since he came upon it, he wanted to show it to someone whom he knew would appreciate it in the same way that he does.

"I may not have as many books as you have, ladybird, but you and me, we know something beautiful when we see it. One day, you and I will tour Europe together. We'll see all the great stuff in Milan and Seville and jolly ol' Pair-ee."

The more Puck talks, the more Santana thinks about Brittany. She thinks about the wonderful way that Brittany has of talking and about how Brittany never fails to look at her when they have a conversation. She wonders if Brittany will make it to the afternoon show and frets that Brittany probably hasn't had anything to eat all day, except for Sam's stolen biscuit.

"Ladybird! Hey, ladybird! Are you even listening to me?"

She isn't.

Since Santana last looked at him, Puck has shifted positions. He leans back on his elbows now, stretched regally upon the deck, his hat lying unworn beside him. His fingers pick at a knot in the platform wood. If he weren't so suddenly offended that Santana stopped paying attention to him, he would almost look serene.

Santana gathers that at least several minutes have passed since Puck started talking to her about Europe. She also gathers that Puck may have just said something to her that he considers important. Did he ask her a question? For several seconds, they remain silent, some large, uncomfortable thing between them. Then, Puck speaks again.

"I thought we were having a conversation," he says in a small voice.

He looks into Santana's eyes and then quickly away, that same little boy from before. Though Santana would defend herself—it can't be a conversation if only one person speaks—she finds that she can't very well do so when Puck seems genuinely hurt that she ignored him. She realizes that Puck showed her something dear to him, and she didn't care one whit.

Suddenly, Santana feels very ungrateful—though, of course, she hadn't meant to treat Puck so inconsiderately on purpose. She also feels ashamed of herself for allowing her thoughts to run away with her again, for the second time in a day. Her grandmother would scold her for showing so much rudeness to her company. She doesn't know why climbing the ladder and watching the lights with Puck today hasn't thrilled her the same way it did before; after all, she can read the books she loves more than once and still enjoy them.

"I'm sorry," Santana apologizes.

Puck huffs out a short, mirthless laugh. He changes from the little boy back to devilish Puck in a trice, his expression hardening.

"Yeah, well, don't worry about it, ladybird," he says, glancing away from Santana, out over the interior of the tent. "I had better go slick up the torches before the afternoon fair anyway. Time's a-wastin'. Come on."

He sets his hat back on his head and clambers onto the ladder, done with the platform, the big top, and Santana, for the time being.

Santana draws a deep breath and prepares to follow him back down to the earth.

(She knows, she knows, she knows that it's not every day that a man like Puck will show someone his lights.)

* * *

><p>One good thing that comes from the protestors storming the midway earlier in the day is that, at the afternoon fair, no one wants Santana to read for them, either cards or palms.<p>

Though no man disparages Santana or complains about her act, very few people queue up in front of her booth and no one asks her to spread her deck; the crowds on the pitch hang back at a distance from her, some regarding her with wary stares and others ignoring her altogether.

It would seem that news of the protest spread through Cherokee between the matinee and the afternoon fair and that no one wants to stand accused by his neighbors of consorting with the kind of evil that the good Christians of the town purport Santana practices. The crowds on the midway seem smaller now than they did earlier, on the whole, and everything feels altogether more subdued.

(People won't entertain themselves with what's taboo if they know someone will judge them for it, but they will happily do so if their friends will do it with them, too.)

Throughout the fair, Santana sits and sits in her booth, watching patrons pass her by. She fidgets with the tablecloth but overall feels quite content not to have to read cards. She waits until the show bell rings and then packs up her props, heading for the backstage area, calmly and without Ken shouting at her for anything.

When she meets up with Puck and Rachel, she finds Puck clad in his knights' shift and Rachel in a veil and suddenly remembers about the knight sketch that she missed earlier in the day. Since Puck seems in no mood to speak with Santana and Santana has little interest in asking Rachel Berry's advice concerning anything, Santana decides to just wing it and follow Rachel once Ken rings them into the big top tent.

In preparation for the act, Santana collects a flower—a tuft of Golden Alexander, this time—and a kerchief from one of Mrs. Schuester's girls standing along the perimeter of the backstage area, ties her own veil, and waits to take the stage, both strangely excited to see what the knight sketch will look like as she takes part in it and still preoccupied with thoughts of Brittany, wondering if Brittany will join the afternoon circus after skipping the matinee.

* * *

><p>The knight sketch is brilliant.<p>

On Ken's cue, the men enter the big top, and, five minutes after them, the women enter the big top, too. The people of Cherokee roar with delight in the stands at the sight of so many pretty girls all dressed in colored veils coming onto the floor together, and Santana feels a rush at having so many people approve of her, even from afar.

She rides the tide of the audience's adoration, dancing beside Rachel Berry, spinning graceful circles so her skirts fan out around her like a child's whirligig, multihued and dazzling. She grins and grins and grins, and when the black knights make a run at her and the other ladies, she shrieks, not from fear but from giddiness.

It all seems a brilliant game.

It's so easy for Santana to give herself over to the performance when she can slip outside herself and be everything right and nothing wrong.

When the black knights charge, the blue knights come up from behind the ladies, bounding out in front of them with their wooden swords raised high. They let out a valiant roar, just as brave and honorable as King Henry and his men on Mr. Shakespeare's Crispin's Day. Santana spots Sam with the other rescuers and lifts her voice to cheer for him especially out of everyone but then quiets a bit when she sees that Puck is a black knight.

(Though she can't name the reason why, it hurts her heart that he should be one of the villains.)

The two sides clash, with the knights in black and the knights in blue staging mock fencing-battles with their nubby wooden weapons. They clatter against each other and the crowd shouts for them. Rachel even grabs on to Santana's hands, and the two girls whoop together for the boys, their voices blending into a single jubilation, flowers twisting between their joined grasp, Santana's Golden Alexander tangling with Rachel's pink Pye Weed.

All through the sketch, Santana feels that Brittany ought to be near to her because everything happy immediately recalls Brittany to Santana's mind and heart. She supposes for a second that she spots Brittany amidst the other ladies, wearing a veil of powder blue, but she can't be sure because, just then, the music changes from a dramatic battle march to a triumphal victory swell. The black knights peel themselves from the floor where the blue knights to a one have vanquished them and bow before their conquerors. The blue knights raise their swords in victory, to the overwhelming support of the crowd.

Santana and Rachel jump up and down alongside each other, and though Santana knows that Rachel only clasps her hands for the act, she can't help but feel strangely wanted and like she's really part of something. The blue knights bow to the audience, and then all the knights, both villains and heroes, line up together and bow to the ladies.

Rachel gives Santana's hand a tug and pulls her forward toward the fellows; though Santana would give her flower to Sam or maybe Puck, they're both too far down the line from her for Santana to approach them gracefully. She ends up extending her Golden Alexander to the dopey young clown with whom Blaine shares his tent, to whom she has never spoken before, despite the fact that they live just next door to each other. The young clown takes the Golden Alexander, wearing a blush, and Santana curtsies to him, as part of the sketch.

She wonders to which knight Brittany gave her flower, if Brittany is about.

The band starts to play the processional music and Santana falls into file alongside Rachel, pleased as Punch and hoping to see Brittany later on in the show.

* * *

><p>All throughout the gypsy act, Santana thinks of Brittany and wonders if they'll get the chance to speak to each other at all after the show, maybe during supper, maybe on another hillside looking at the stars.<p>

When Santana and Puck exit the big top so that the Little Malibran can sing her stratospheric notes uninterrupted on the stage, Santana takes up her usual post at the aperture in the back of the tent, biting her lip and waiting, giddy and nervous as if she were about to receive some important news.

When Rachel leaves the stage to raucous applause, Will the Ringmaster steps to the fore, the lights directed on him. He waves to the audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a frontiersman skilled in the art of knife throwing—!" he begins, and Santana hears nothing else.

The nervousness in Santana's body dissolves and she lets out the breath she held in her lungs, immediately clapping for Will's announcement and for the simple fact that she'll see Brittany after so many hours apart from her and without as much as a shared glance between them.

Her heart swells as she watches Mr. Pierce and his daughter take to the floor, Brittany smiling and waving to the crowd, walking on her tiptoes, as usual.

(Santana applauds so loudly that the little circus children playing all around her turn and stare, amazed at her and wondering what must please her so.)

She bounces on her feet and feels the invisible string between her and Brittany stretch taut. It vibrates on a high clear note all through Santana's body.

But then.

It happens in an instant: Brittany tilts her head just so and her hair falls away from the side of her face, sliding down her cheek to reveal Brittany's neck and, above that, her ear. The audience can't see it from where they sit, but Santana can.

Blood.

A brown-red shock of dried blood stains the shell of Brittany's ear, which appears decidedly pink and swollen, even from afar. The injury is only visible for a second before Brittany tucks her hair back into place, shrouding it, and continues to prepare for her act, posing herself in front of the board and flirting with the audience. Even so, Santana sees the injury as surely as she would have if Mr. Adams had advertised it on a circus poster.

Instantly, she feels sick.

Though Santana doesn't know how Brittany came by the injury, the mere thought that something caused Brittany pain hits Santana like a blow to the gut. She only just stops herself from running out on stage to ask Brittany if she's all right and sinks back on her heels instead, worrying her hands together. She glances between Brittany and Mr. Pierce and thinks _Oh God_.

(Santana tries not to remember the Tenderloin district, not when she can't be sure.)

Santana forgets about the act until the first knife drives into the backboard.

She flinches, but Brittany doesn't.

For some reason, the thought that anyone would throw knives at Brittany when she already has an injury makes Santana want to cry, even if Santana knows that Mr. Pierce must throw knives at Brittany for the sake of the show.

Suddenly, Santana wishes that she could pray—that she believed in her grandmother's God instead of only in her grandmother's Devil and that she didn't feel so damnable herself at every turn.

Santana both loves and hates the way that Brittany remains perfectly still, so grounded and trusting where she stands, her eyes locked to her father's, a performance smile on her face. Brittany doesn't seem unhappy or hurt or wary at all, and yet Santana can't help but feel all those things on Brittany's behalf.

It's obvious that no one tended to Brittany's injury after she sustained it, even though she likely sustained it hours ago. Santana wonders if Brittany has a headache from the impact—for Santana must suppose that Brittany came by her boxed ear through impact of some kind—and whether it hurts Brittany to move her neck around or not.

Santana wants to clean the blood away from Brittany's skin softly with a rag, touching so lightly that Brittany will scarcely feel it. She wants to kiss Brittany's cheek to make Brittany feel better the way that her grandmother kissed her cheek to make her feel better whenever she cut her knee as a child and stood in need of comfort. She wants to make it so that Brittany doesn't hurt and feels close to tears knowing that something or someone wounded Brittany when she wasn't there to stop it from happening.

Mr. Pierce lobs another knife and it drives into the wood.

Brittany smiles, brave upon brave, and Santana knots her fingers together, feeling helpless as she waits in the wing.

_Oh, Diablo que me sigue, por favor, no siga Brittany. Manténgase en mi hombro y no vuelven a molestarla._

The act goes off without any trouble until the very last throw, when Mr. Pierce's arm wavers, mid-release.

Just like in Mankato, the steel on Mr. Pierce's knife catches the light, refracting it at the peak of its arc, and the audience all gasps as a one. Santana takes a stutter-step forward and swallows Brittany's name in her throat, her heart suspended along the same trajectory as the knife.

Brittany jerks.

Steel hits.

Someone screams.

Unlike the last time Mr. Pierce erred, Brittany remains standing. The knife's hilt protrudes from the flat board just above her shoulder, so close that Santana wonders if it didn't graze Brittany's shoulder as it hit the wood. The audience screams and Mr. Pierce rushes forward.

It takes Santana several seconds to realize that Brittany is safe—that the knife didn't hit her.

Brittany only opens her eyes, which she had cinched shut, once her father reaches her and takes her by the shoulders, checking her over for injuries. He kisses her hair and tugs her to his chest, standing so close to her that their feet jumble together on the ring, his moccasins up against her dainty white slippers with the laces made of ribbon. The audience alternately boos and cheers, disappointed, on the one hand, that Mr. Pierce botched the performance but heartened, on the other, that he didn't impale his daughter.

Santana takes three steps inside the tent, waiting on the edge of the darkness. She doesn't know if the audience can see her or not, but she doesn't care if they can; she just wants to see Brittany.

She watches Mr. Pierce and Brittany take a hasty bow, extricate the knives from the backboard, and exit the stage, all while Will reminds the audience to clap for Brittany's safety.

(Santana would clap if she knew that Brittany was safe.)

(She doesn't.)

* * *

><p>Santana's heart beats on bird's wings all the way through the final parade. She bolts from the big top as soon as the show ends, shoving her tambourine into Puck's arms with a vague promise to find him later before sprinting from her backstage area to the one closer to the menagerie, hoping to intercept Brittany before Brittany disappears.<p>

"Oh please, oh please, oh please," she says, drawing stern expressions from various members of the company as she goes against the traffic.

At first, Santana doesn't actually expect to find Brittany because she never actually has found Brittany before—Brittany has always visited her, like Lady Philosophy did Boethius in his cell—but then, all of a sudden, she does expect it.

(That's how things would go in a story.)

"Brittany?" she calls, pushing into the crowds in the second backstage, her voice high with both hope and worry. "Brittany Pierce?"

"Mrs. Puckerman?"

It isn't Brittany.

The salutation comes from Blaine the trilby tramp, his clown face paint melting down his face from all his cavorting about under the stage lights during the show. Santana has never spoken to Blaine before, and she can't remember ever personally making his acquaintance, but it seems that he must know her as Puck's wife, all the same. He beams at Santana, kindly.

(She supposes it isn't always so bad, being Mrs. Puckerman.)

Blaine draws closer to Santana, pressing his hat to his head so that it doesn't fall off as the people passing on either side of him jostle into his shoulders. He isn't a very tall fellow at all and can scarcely see over the performers around him. He waits to speak until he gets to within a yard of Santana, so that he doesn't have to shout over the din.

"If you're looking for Brittany, she just left," Blaine says helpfully, glancing off in the direction of the menagerie, to show Santana where Brittany went. "She's always off like a shot after the shows. I don't think she likes wearing her costume when she doesn't have to." He smiles congenially. "If you hurry, you could probably catch up with her."

"Thank you," Santana says, genuinely grateful to Blaine for the information but having no further time to spare for him. Santana nods at Blaine and brushes past where he stands, eager to catch up to Brittany before Brittany disappears for the night.

The crowd thins as Santana rounds the long side of the tent, coming up between the big top and the menagerie. Though the ground still feels warm underfoot, the atmosphere itself has cooled considerably with the setting of the sun. Swarms of gnats blight the air and bats swoop to swallow them up, plunging from the firmament like dark comets only to regain their altitude at the last possible instant, pulling gracefully out of their dives and back into the sky.

Santana spots a few performers up ahead of her, but none of them is Brittany. She picks up her pace, breaking into a full run.

Her feet take her toward the north side of camp, toward Brittany's tent, which is where she guesses that Brittany would go to disrobe from her costume following a show. While some performers choose to make their changes in the dressing tents, Santana reasons that Brittany probably prefers to do so in the privacy of her own tent, and particularly considering that Santana has never seen Brittany pass through Santana's backstage area on her way to the dressing tent after a show to date.

Santana passes under the billboard border separating the two camps and passes Mr. Adams' business tent for the second time since the morning, turning onto the row of tents where the Pierces make their home.

"Brittany!" she calls as soon as she draws close enough to Brittany's tent that she thinks Brittany will hear her through the canvas. "Brittany, are you in there?"

She hopes to see the tent flaps part, to catch a glimpse of tatty cobalt blue or corn silk blonde, familiar beneath the purple dusk. Santana nearly stumbles over her own feet, pulling to a halt outside Brittany's front door.

"Brittany?" she calls again.

"Darlin'?"

The voice doesn't come from inside the tent, but from somewhere down the row, over Santana's shoulder. Santana spins and there she is: Brittany in starlit blue, her brow furrowed in confusion, surprised for once to see Santana and not the other way around. Santana has seldom encountered Brittany looking so thoroughly bemused.

Santana runs the few paces separating herself from Brittany, intending to catch Brittany up into an embrace, but then she decides better of it once she remembers Brittany's hurt ear. Santana slows to a stop with just a few feet between herself and Brittany and reaches out gently with a single hand rather than with her whole body to make that first saving contact. Her fingers find Brittany's and tangle in them, just for the sake of skin on skin, just for the sake of knowing that Brittany is okay.

But Brittany doesn't seem okay, though she smiles at Santana's touch.

Even through the darkness, Santana can see that Brittany pinches her mouth shut too tightly and that her eyes bear a certain tentative farawayness in them.

"Brittany," Santana says. "Brittany, what's wrong? What happened to your ear? You're hurt."

Her voice gets smaller and smaller as she asks more questions because Brittany retreats further and further behind her eyes.

Santana hates that Brittany seems so distant, even standing so near that Santana can feel her body heat.

Just then, something jostles behind the girls, and Brittany jumps. Her eyes dart toward her own tent and she stands stalk still, like a watchdog who's heard an unwelcome night sound at the edge of his property. She waits for a long while and so does Santana, who doesn't dare to turn around for fear that she'll discover Mr. Pierce hovering behind her, angry.

(If she doesn't turn, she won't see him, and if she doesn't see him, he isn't there.)

After a full minute, Brittany shifts her posture.

"Come on, darlin'," Brittany says furtively.

She glances toward her own tent once more, even as she starts to lead Santana in the opposite direction from it. Thankfully, no one emerges from the tent to follow them and nothing else around them moves. All the same, Brittany keeps her eyes trained in the direction of her own living place as though it were a snapping turtle hissing at her and Santana from the grass, open-mouthed and dangerous.

"Come on," she mumbles again.

Brittany speaks calmly, in her usual just-so way, but doesn't seem calm or just-so herself at all. Though Santana has only known Brittany for four days, she can already discern the difference between the warm and effortless silence that Brittany wears when she drifts away into happy thinking and Brittany's current silence, which forms the curtain between Brittany's outer cool and some inner unease.

Neither one of the girls speaks while they walk, and Brittany keeps all her fingers linked through Santana's—not just her pinky—as they take a southerly route to Santana's tent. Brittany's grip only starts to relax as she and Santana pass through the trisection of tents where they first spoke to each other. It only fully relaxes once they reach where Santana lives.

"Puck?" Brittany calls, standing outside the tent flaps.

(Santana wouldn't have thought to check for him and adores Brittany for thinking to do so, even in her distress.)

When no one answers, Santana parts the tent flaps for Brittany, waiting for Brittany to enter the tent before following after at her heels. Shadows rule inside the structure, the darkness from the outdoors prevailing, even deeper and more lugubrious beneath a canvas shroud.

"Brittany, what happened to your ear?" Santana asks as soon as she feels that they can speak freely to each other. "Are you all right? Let me wash it for you."

Brittany doesn't answer right away, and Santana can't see Brittany through the darkness to check her face, but when Santana tries to move away from Brittany toward the steel basin, Brittany tightens her grip on Santana's hand, holding her fast.

"It's okay, darlin'," Brittany says. "You don't need to worry. Daddy just—"

Her sentence trails away.

Santana feels sick.

She tries to hold off from making assumptions about what Brittany started to say until Brittany finishes saying it, but she can't help but remember the hard look on Mr. Pierce's face as he dragged his daughter away from her tent before the performance. The image of blood stained over Brittany's ear returns to her mind, and she feel her heart beat in her temples for it.

"Brittany," Santana says slowly, "did your father—did he hit you on account of me?"

It surprises her how softly she whispers it.

She tightens her grip on Brittany's hand.

"No," Brittany says right away. "No, he didn't. Not because of you. He—he just got confused for a minute is all. He said he was s-sorry afterwards. He was really sorry, Santana."

Brittany's words hop like a little bird flitting between tree branches, each sentence ending on an upswing, like a question—the little bird taking wing on the wind. Santana's heart almost collapses in her chest just to hear it. Before she can stop it from happening, her eyes well with tears.

Somehow, Brittany's entrapment hurts her more than her own ever has.

The thought that someone would hurt Brittany puts a deep ache into Santana's heart. Her whole self sets against the idea, hating it, and especially because she knows there isn't anything for either herself or Brittany to do about it. Rules are rules are rules, after all, and when so many rules pile on top of a person, it's hard to know where to even start to break them.

"He said he wouldn't ever do it again," Brittany promises.

"I know," Santana squeaks.

(She thinks of the Tenderloin district and doesn't feel guilty for it at all this time.)

(Just spent and trapped and angry and sad.)

When Puck sought a place to keep Santana while he went out West to search for the circus, he took her to his people first—to a Sephardi boarding house on Hester Street, where he tried to make the case that Santana was his wife and that he just needed someone to care for her in his absence until she could join him on the prairies. He promised that she would pose no trouble at all.

But the Jews behind the counter knew better than to believe that a little girl with Spanish eyes and yeller skin, called after Saint Anne, could ever be one of theirs, with her marriage rabbi-blessed and the Torah in her heart. They told Puck that even if Santana's surname were the same as his, they couldn't take her, not with how the Populists and Ms. Moore already disliked them so, _our apologies, boytshik_.

So Puck brought Santana to the Negroes' Tenderloin house and made her wait outdoors on the sidewalk while he bought her space in one of their rooms. He promised them that, yes, she belonged in this neighborhood, and, yes, she was a good girl, no funny business, no family way, yes, his wife.

Though it frightened Santana very much when Puck left her behind to catch his train out the West, Santana tolerated the boarding house for his sake, bearing the abuses of the other female boarders with whom she shared her room in patience and helping the doyenne with the household chores whenever the opportunity presented itself to her to do it.

Santana tried her best to keep out of trouble and not offend anyone, shutting her eyes to the moral offenses that took place between the mixed company of boarders under cover of night and _Yes, ma'am_'ing and _Yes, sir_'ing her way through every meal and working moment.

But then Sunday rolled around, and Santana set down somewhere to take her rest, as the doyenne insisted, carrying with her the only book left in her possession following her father's death: a little paperback copy of the _Scribner_ magazine, to which her father had faithfully subscribed.

The book contained the full story of "Sara Crewe," which had been one of Santana's favorites since her father first read it to her when she was just nine years in age. Even as a young woman, Santana still related very much to the tale, for her own Dr. "Lucas" was not unlike Sara's dear Captain Crewe, whose pitying love for his daughter was perhaps his greatest fault.

Just as Santana took a seat in the corner and opened the book, the doyen of the house—a great, gruff fellow, with skin as dark as licorice—stomped over to where she sat and asked her what in hell she meant by feigning that she would read a book.

When Santana said she wasn't feigning, the doyen yanked her off the floor and held her up by the collar of her shirt. He screamed and screamed at Santana that she should know better before cuffing her, hard, across the mouth and grabbing her book away from her.

(Later, Santana told herself that she only wept because he had surprised her, that's all.)

(Not because it hurt.)

(It hurt.)

Mouth wounds heal quickly enough, and by the time Santana stepped onto the train at the Grand Central Terminal a week later, her lip no longer swelled at all.

(No wounds for anyone to see.)

"I know, Britt," she says, "I know. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

With each new apology, Santana leans closer and closer to Brittany until finally, it happens.

Santana Lopez kisses Brittany Pierce.

At first, Santana scarcely touches Brittany, her closed lips stuttering lightly over Brittany's parted ones, the contact so gentle that Santana wonders if Brittany even feels it. This is Santana's first given kiss, and it surprises her because she hadn't thought of how to give it before she attempted it. She draws so near to Brittany that she can feel Brittany's breath against her skin.

It's the breath that does it.

Brittany gasps.

Santana pulls away, embarrassment blooming in her chest.

"Was that all right, Britt?" she asks, voice so high and flighty that she scarcely recognizes it for her own.

Though Santana can't see Brittany smile, she somehow feels it—feels the way that Brittany's cheeks lift into the first hints of her pleased cat grin.

"You can do that again, if you like, darlin'," Brittany whispers, tilting her face just so, waiting for another kiss.

"Well, all right," Santana says stupidly, leaning forward again.

Her free hand moves to rest against the curve of Brittany's jaw on the side of Brittany's face farthest from Brittany's boxed ear, and Brittany rises to her touch.

Immediately, Santana notices how warm Brittany's skin feels, like she carries day heat deep within her bones.

This time she's the one to gasp.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

Her top lip sets over Brittany's bottom lip, and Santana nods into the kiss, gentle and searching, shy with the newness of it. Everything inside her blooms.

"Now, don't be scared, darlin'," Brittany whispers in her sweetest voice, livening to Santana's touch and kissing and kissing and kissing her back. Brittany's arms wrap around Santana's waist, and Santana walks them backward to the cot, almost without thinking. They don't break from their kiss as they sit; they just work their mouths against each other and breathe out wet breaths.

Once they're seated side by side, Brittany fully smiles into their kiss, and Santana likes it so well that she has to kiss Brittany deeper, just to make Brittany smile more. The mood in the room changes from one of apology and comfort to something happier and more grateful. Santana scarcely remembers that anything exists outside of Brittany's kisses and presses further into them.

Brittany opens her mouth wider and Santana wonders if Brittany doesn't want to kiss like they did earlier today. Santana waits another second before slipping her tongue past Brittany's lips and running it against Brittany's tongue. Brittany lets out a pitched sigh in response.

She and Santana have never kissed quite like this before.

Santana pulls away for a second. "Was that all right?" she pants, breathless.

"Sure thing," Brittany giggles, nipping a little at Santana's lip between her own.

_Oh God._

That lit feeling from earlier in the day throbs low in Santana, between her legs, in her belly. Brittany tightens her hold around Santana's waist, drawing them closer together where they sit astride from each other on the cot. When she does, their chests push flush together, and Santana feels a current spark all the way through her, from her skin to her bones.

Santana presses a sloppy kiss to the corner of Brittany's mouth, scarcely able to think.

"That's nice, darlin'," Brittany says, pressing even closer to Santana and sending another throb to the place between Santana's legs. "That's really, really... oh."

(As much as Santana likes to hear Brittany say sweet things to her, she likes to make Brittany feel sweet things even better, she thinks.)

Santana slips her tongue into Brittany's mouth again, and their bodies jolt against each other. Santana has never felt like this before, like everything in her is so awake and tuned to both what's inside and what's outside herself. She can feel her heartbeat all over her body and especially when her mouth strays from Brittany's, brushing over Brittany's chin and cheek and—_Oh God_—at the crook of her jaw.

She didn't know kissing someone else could feel like this.

Brittany's body rocks against hers, and Santana almost aches from wanting Brittany to touch her more, to set her hands all over her. Santana kisses Brittany's neck, and Brittany arches against her, blooming like a rose. Brittany lets out the most incomprehensible little murmur and moves her hands up Santana's back.

The feeling in Santana's belly tightens, wound up as if on a crank, and she kisses Brittany's mouth again, drawing out the breath from her.

If something doesn't happen soon, Santana thinks she'll die from wanting.

"Brittany? Santana?"

The girls jolt apart and, in the next instant, the flaps to the tent part. Santana's heart nearly leaps from her chest and fear washes over her as a sudden wave would a bather in the sea. A flood of Spanish and Will the Ringmaster's curse words rises on Santana's tongue but doesn't yet spill over.

_Santo, Santo Dios. Goddamnit._

"You girls in here? Oh, there you are."

If Noah Puckerman had put his head inside the tent just now, Santana would have hit him for frightening her, but the intruder isn't Noah Puckerman—it's Sam Evans, and once Santana recognizes him and his smiling face, her shocked anger immediately fades away, replaced by curiosity and a simple fondness for Sam.

"Sam, what are you doing here?" she stammers, still flighty and breathless. She grabs onto the edge of her cot, just to have somewhere to put her hands that isn't on Brittany for the moment.

Sam takes her question as an invitation to enter the tent. Though Santana can hardly see him through the darkness, she notices right away that he carries one something in either hand. She also picks up on the smell of food—the warm starch of potatoes and salt-sweet savor of gravy-soaked meat.

"I noticed that you two weren't at supper," he says, by way of explanation, "so I asked Ms. Jones if maybe I could take some plates to you. She didn't like the idea of you missing so many meals today, even if she is a bit sore at you for not making it to the mess pit, so she gave me permission to find you, if I could. When you weren't at Britt's place, I figured you might be here. Lucky guess, huh?"

"Really lucky," Brittany says, and it surprises Santana how quickly Brittany can change from wild to tame. "I haven't eaten all day."

"Well, then, I'm glad I found you," Sam says kindly, extending the two plates to the girls. "I didn't bring any cups with me, but I could go fetch you something to wet your whistles, if you like."

"I think I'm all right without it," Brittany says. "But if Santana would like something—"

"I'm fine, thank you," Santana demurs.

For a second, they all just stare at one another through the darkness, smiling—at least in Santana's case—at each other's silhouettes. The metal on Santana's plate warms her lap, her meal still hot from the mess fire.

"Thank you, Sam," Brittany says after a minute.

"Thank you, Sam," Santana repeats, meaning more than she can say.

* * *

><p>Sam leaves the girls to their dining, and, once he does so, they lapse into silence, both suddenly immensely tired and immensely hungry. They eat their meal in quiet, their knees knocked together as they sit on the edge of Santana's cot, their spoons tinkering against their plates, but the interior of the tent otherwise silent around them.<p>

It doesn't take them long at all to finish their meat and potatoes, and, once they do, they both set their plates and spoons down into the grass. Brittany immediately reaches for Santana's hands, tangling them together in her lap. She runs a thumb over the thread ring at Santana's finger, absentminded.

"Is something wrong, darlin'?" she asks.

And before Santana can stop herself, she speaks what's on her mind.

"Brittany, do you think we'll go to Hell?"

The question seems to come from nowhere—or at least it must to Brittany—but it's the one that's nagged at Santana's heart ever since she started thinking about Sam and his Christian kindness, and then about what the preachers said on the midway and how it relates to her grandmother's Devil and her hellfire cards.

Even though Brittany maybe isn't the person to ask about it, somehow Santana thinks that she is.

Brittany shifts where she sits, her leg pressed against Santana's where they sit. She runs a thumb over the bones in Santana's hand, gentle, and looks at her lap. "Why would we go to Hell, darlin'?" she asks.

Santana shrugs. "For being in the circus," she offers, "—for what's in our hearts."

She wonders if she ought to explain herself—to tell Brittany about what the protestors said on the midway or about what her grandmother said from her deathbed, but somehow she thinks that Brittany understands her well enough without her saying anything.

Brittany pets over Santana's thumb with her own.

"Circus folk are the salt of the earth, Santana," she says quietly.

Brittany lifts their tangled hands from her lap and holds them so close to her face that Santana feels Brittany's breath on her skin. When next Brittany speaks, she does so surely, in her plain, just so-voice.

"The company is my family, and I love them with all my heart. Now I haven't ever been to church a day in my life, darlin', and nobody ever baptized me, either. I might go to Hell for that but not for love—and never in a thousand years will anyone ever."

And she kisses Santana's knuckles, one by one.

* * *

><p>Santana smoothes Brittany's hair away from her neck, brushing it back with one hand and tilting Brittany's head so it will stay in place with the other. She raises the wet rag to Brittany's ear, wishing that she had a light by which to see.<p>

"Stay still," she whispers, sitting up on her knees so she can reach. "I don't want to hurt you."

"All right," Brittany says.

(No one has ever trusted Santana the way that Brittany does, so deep and pure and patient.)

Brittany flinches at the first dab, and Santana hates herself for hurting her.

"I'm sorry," she says, making her second touch even lighter.

True to her word, Brittany doesn't move and hardly breathes; she just waits for Santana to make her swabs, gripping onto the side of the cot. Though Santana can't see Brittany's injury, she feels it beneath the rag, swollen and hard to the touch. It takes Santana a second to hear herself making little cooing noises like her grandmother used to do when tending to her childhood wounds, showing Brittany sympathy.

_"Pobrecita Brittany,"_ she says.

(She means something else.)

Though Brittany doesn't move at all, she relaxes under the rag, softening to Santana in the dark against the night.

* * *

><p>By the time they take their plates back to the mess area, Ma Jones and her girls have gone to sleep. They wash their dishes in silence, submerging them in the tepid water of the steel tubs and wetting them with the towels the kitchen girls have left out along the tubs' edges, making it so that they'll shine clean by morning, ready for breakfast and the rush.<p>

The girls walk to Brittany's tent without speaking, linked pinky-in-pinky.

(When Santana leaves Brittany with a goodnight kiss, it's the most important thing she thinks she's ever done in her life.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I would like to dedicate this chapter to my friend Kir in celebration of her birthday. I love you, roomie!<strong>

**Other Author's Note: I would also like to thank Kir and Sadie for cheerleading me on this chapter.**

**As always, I couldn't have made it through this beast without my impossibly flawless beta Han at socallmedaisy, who is wonderful in every way. You should all check out her story i80w, which you will find linked on her tumblr because it's absolutely wonderful. #brotp: with the u and everything #brotp: wubba habba cat**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**"Vale, señor Evans" : "Okay, Mr. Evans"**_

_**desventurado : unfortunate**_

_**Oh, Diablo que me sigue, por favor, no siga Brittany. Manténgase en mi hombro y no vuelven a molestarla : Oh, Devil who follows me, please, don't follow Brittany. Remain on my shoulder and never bother her**_

_**Santo, Santo Dios : Holy, holy God**_

_**Pobrecita Brittany : Poor little Brittany**_


	7. A Normal Day at the Circus

**Chapter 6: A Normal Day at the Circus**

**Thursday, June 30th, 1898: Correctionville, Iowa**

Santana won't remember it when Puck comes in late and she wakes to see him silhouetted against the flaps of the tent, which stand partially opened, showing the starry sky. She won't remember that he breathes in wet, cold puffs, his exhalations visible against a backdrop of Ursa Major and Draco. She'll see the outline of his hat but not the features of his face, and nothing about the moment will linger in her mind. She won't recall how Puck pauses when she stirs or their conversation after that.

"What time is it?"

"After midnight. Get some rest, ladybird."

"You never sleep."

His long silence following her observation won't print into her memories. She won't remember turning on the cot or him, quiet, still, crouched beneath the threshold. She won't recall how he waits, watching her suspended between dreams and doing, between somewhere faraway and being here, with him.

She won't remember any of it—and especially not the part when she closes her eyes again.

Her first recollection of the day will come what seems like just a moment later, when Puck sets a hand on her shoulder.

"It's four o'clock, ladybird. Time to wake up," he says.

(She remembers Brittany the way dry earth remembers rain.)

* * *

><p>Puck has brought Santana coffee and hotcakes in bed, and he sits on the grass, watching her eat, wearing a reverent expression. The fact that Puck watches her unnerves her; she doesn't know why Puck seems so interested in her today, like he can't puzzle her out, no matter how long he remains at her feet. Santana feels glad for the darkness, shrouding her and Puck from each other, hiding her ill-at-ease blush from him beneath shadows, and particularly as she knows she wounded Puck's ego yesterday in the big top, ignoring him while he talked to her about pillars of light and tourist spots in Paris.<p>

The strange thing is that it seems as if Puck has forgiven her for that now—or at least forgotten about it.

Puck's unexpected ease around her causes Santana to feel awkward for her unease around him.

Puck wears a softness under the morning dark. He takes Santana's plate and cup from her when she finishes her meal and sets them gently on the grass before sitting up on his knees, leaning toward Santana where she sits on the cot.

"G'morning, ladybird," he says, his heat warming her space, his body pressing close to her. "Did you have sweet dreams? You kept smiling in your sleep."

He doesn't wait for Santana to answer his question before he presses a kiss below her ear, his lips hot on her skin, his chin rough from shaving. He smells like the almost-mint of menthol, and, beneath that, choking tobacco chaw and sweat. His lips slide from her ear to her cheek, ungraceful, and she swallows and feels his breath against her skin. His mouth works over Santana's temple and along her jaw line, and she remains as still as grass stalks with no wind to disturb them. Something closes inside of Santana, and she doesn't breathe and doesn't curl to him.

Puck seems to notice her stillness. He sits up on his knees, closer to her ear. "It's okay to like what you like, ladybird," he whispers, his voice husky, fat with something that Santana doesn't want to think about.

He smells and feels warmer now than he did a second ago. Santana can't look at his face. She stares straight ahead, an animal tremble running through her breastbone, all the way down through her fingertips. There's just too much of Puck everywhere; his smell and heat and mass overwhelm Santana and make her want to gag.

Just as Puck moves to kiss her mouth, the morning bell rings, jarring him away from her.

Santana lets out the breath she held all at once.

The doors inside her remain closed and locked.

(Puck will never have the key.)

* * *

><p>Of course, Santana searches for Brittany on the way to the train depot, and, of course, she doesn't find her. It hardly matters, though—not when it takes the circus less than forty minutes to make it from Cherokee, Iowa to Correctionville, Iowa via train, and especially not when Santana dozes through most of the ride, tired to her bones.<p>

Puck calls Correctionville a little piss of a town, and, despite his crassness, Santana can't help but agree.

Correctionville's main street boasts shops, a post office, various businesses, and a pharmacy, but very few side streets. Overall, the place seems sparse and less settled than some of the other towns Santana has visited since joining the circus.

Based on what Santana observes, Correctionville itself only encompasses about twenty or so houses on the whole—though, judging by the crowds that line the street, it wouldn't surprise Santana to learn that the population of Correctionville also includes the occupants of some countryside farmhouses beyond the town proper.

Despite the early hour, many dozens of people line the main street along the parade route, and they whoop and holler for the circus when they see it. The awe and excitement bright upon their faces suggests that Correctionville has seldom encountered anything quite as exciting as the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie. Santana feels a strange swell of pride in bringing a thrill to the hoi polloi, though she knows she personally plays but a very small role in creating the circus mystique.

Santana hadn't expected anything exciting to happen during today's parade—and particularly considering the fact that she doesn't even get to spend it with Brittany, like she did yesterday—so it comes as a complete shock to her when a loud bell rings out over the triumphal march, and a half-dozen wagons not belonging to the circus pour onto the street just in front of the circus processional.

The wagons emerge from a large wooden shed at the side of a brick building and take to the street in a mad rush. At first, Santana thinks that the new wagons must be an intrusion and a mistake, but then she realizes that none of the other circus performers seems startled to see the wagons joining the file. Instead, they just continue on as usual, as if they had expected the wagons to appear.

Upon her second glance, Santana realizes that the wagons belong to the Correctionville Fire Brigade, for so it says written in pretty gilded print all up and down the barrel sides of their biggest apparatuses.

The wagons resemble no wagons that Santana has ever seen before, even traveling with a circus which transports all manner of bestiary and the trappings necessary to construct a whole tent city wherever it should settle; all of the fire brigade wagons look jigsaw queer and utterly alien, like something one of Mr. Verne's mad inventors dreamt up in the haze of an opium reverie, with ladders, hatchets, leather buckets, and cabinetry attached to them.

The wagon that rides at the head of the processional reminds Santana of an open-backed landau, except for the fact that it features a large brass boiler rising up from its carriage rather than seats for passengers. Various levers and valves protrude from the boiler, which shines so brightly against the morning glare than Santana finds she can't look directly at it, lest it blind her, its own small sun.

A great, leather drum sits high alongside the driver on his seat, pivoting on a hanger, so that it can move here or move there, but Santana cannot for the life of her ascertain the function of the drum by observation. A helmet-like silver bell dangles from the side of the car, ringing out as the wagon rollicks over the uneven street.

Three fat-rumped chestnut horses pull the wagon along, and the driver wears a uniform, sharp in gray, complete with a peaked cap with a badge on it. The people lining the streets seem just as enthused to see him as they do to see the circus clowns cavorting or even the mighty elephants galumphing down the street behind him. They wave frantically to the fellow and whistle at him as he drives his wagon by where they stand.

Santana suspects that he might be the fire marshal.

Two ladder wagons follow after the first coach, all trussed up with steps and rungs and with thick wooden wheels painted in smart reds and yellows, as bold in color as does Sam's clown makeup.

Several uniformed men hang from the sides of these wagons, and a smiling, hairy dog pants from atop the ladder wagon farthest to the back of the parade, his tawny coat shining in the morning brightness. Sprockets and whirligigs spin at the sides of the wagon box, and twin python coils of canvas hose curl at the trunk of the wagon traveling on the left side of the street.

Behind the ladder wagons roll the two vehicles which interest Santana the most: namely, the water wagons, which both boast great wooden drums on the backs of them, with each drum as round and voluminous as Methuselah's midsection. These wagons must contain several hundred gallons of water each. A spigot apiece protrudes from the backs of the barrels, ready to hook to a hose. It takes a team of six draft horses per vehicle to pull the wagons along.

The fire brigade leads the circus all the way down the main street in town, sounding off bells and whistles over the trump of the circus music and eliciting wild applause from the crowds as they do so. The parade takes its course all the way out of town, past the last houses, to a great flat of green land bordering both a river and a sparse wood. The white city stands only partially erected in the midst of the wilderness.

Somehow, Santana suspects that the fire brigade will turn around and head back to town once they escort the circus into camp, but that's not what happens. Instead, the fire wagons stop in the grass beside the circus wagons, and the firemen debark from the fire wagons as if they intend to stay with the circus.

Santana would perhaps feel more hornswoggled about the fire brigade joining the circus for the morning if it weren't for the fact that something distracts her from watching them the instant she jumps from her rambler—namely, a pretty voice.

"Hey, darlin'!"

(The prettiest voice.)

Before Santana can turn around, Brittany sidles up behind her and sets a chin on her shoulder, arms wrapping around Santana's waist. Santana flushes with a warm, familiar waking, remembering the Brittany-feeling from yesterday and tuning to Brittany, very much obliged.

Brittany smells windswept, like campfire and outdoors, the faintest hint of tallow soap, apples, animal heat, and life. Brittany's cheek brushes against Santana's, and suddenly it seems to Santana that Brittany has situated herself right where she belongs.

"I had a dream about you last night," Brittany all but purrs into Santana's ear. "Do you like sarsaparilla?"

"What?" Santana says, almost forgetting to breathe.

Brittany giggles. "What do you think of the fire brigade?" she asks, releasing Santana's waist and moving around to face her. She grins her cheeky cat grin, pleased as pudding pie to see Santana so early in the day. Her fingers traipse down Santana's arm until their pinky fingers link.

"What are they doing here?" Santana asks stupidly.

"They're here to wash the damn elephants," Puck interjects, hopping off the rambler, landing heavily on the earth as he steps up beside Santana.

Santana tenses.

She had forgotten about Puck as soon as Brittany appeared. Now she feels not so much remiss as she does caught.

She considers what Puck says. "Do they do that often?" she asks, scrunching up her brow as she envisions a professional fire brigade employing their equipment to hose down an African elephant in the same way that they would a house blaze.

"Sure thing, darlin'," Brittany says sweetly, swinging her and Santana's hands between them.

Puck's eyes shift between Santana and Brittany, thirsty for the former and distrustful of the latter. Santana doesn't know why Puck acts so wary of Brittany, who seems nothing but upright to Santana, but she wishes he would quit scowling at her, whatever his reason for doing it. Santana shoots Puck a warning look, but he ignores it.

"I'm going to go put our things in the tent and then head to town to buy me some more aftershave," Puck says gruffly. "If Ken asks after me, tell him I won't be an hour or two."

"All right," Santana says, wary under Puck's attention.

Puck spares Santana another long look before turning in the direction of their tent and departing for it, pulling his hat brim down as he goes.

(Santana immediately feels lighter upon his leaving.)

She gives Brittany's pinky finger a little squeeze.

"How's your ear?" she asks, quietly enough that no one around them will overhear her.

Brittany gives a one-shouldered shrug. "It's all right. I had this pretty swell nurse wash it out for me last night," she answers jokingly, her expression a smirk but also incredibly fond and sweet.

"Well, your nurse wants you to take it easy," Santana says earnestly.

She glances at Brittany's injured ear but can't see it beneath the sunshine curtain of Brittany's hair. She wishes that she and Brittany could go someplace quiet to talk, but she knows that Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester will probably have chores for them soon and would never allow it. She settles for swinging Brittany's hand closer to her.

"Did she tell you that?" Brittany teases.

"Yeah," Santana says, "and she made me promise to take care of you."

Brittany bites her lip and looks at Santana so, so carefully. "That's just decent of her," she says, a strange reverence in her voice.

(Her words sound so much like something else.)

Just then, a loud trill rings out over the camp, and Santana turns to see the three elephants all in a flutter, their handlers prodding them toward a patch of sparse grass, the fire wagons circling up around them. Santana watches with wonder as the firemen cinch hoses to the barrels atop the water wagons, screwing them into place with strong hands and great effort.

At the same time as the firemen assemble their apparatuses for usage, several supes troop into the wagon circle from the camp, coming from the direction of the mess pit. Most of them bear buckets filled with water, heavy at the ends of their arms, though one fellow carries a basket stocked with several bars of tallow soap, of the same amber hue as that which stays beside the shower stalls behind the camp.

Though washing the elephants seems to be a usual event at the circus, most of the company turns up to take in the proceedings all the same. Several women, including some of Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses and Mrs. Evans, come around with their little children, who seem more genuinely fascinated with the firefighting equipment than they do with the everyday elephants.

Sam's little brother and sister tug at their mother's skirt and point at the shiny badges upon the firemen's hats, awed, and Santana finds herself sharing their feeling as the elephant handlers and supes souse up the tallow soap and approach the elephants with it.

It had never occurred to Santana in the first place that elephants needed scrubbing, let alone with soap bubbles, and she must smile at the thought because Brittany nudges their hips together, wearing a giddy smile herself.

"Just wait until you see it, darlin'," she says excitedly.

The supes and handlers surround the elephants, three or four of them around each beast, and begin to rub the soap bars up and down the elephants' arboreal legs and hull-like sides. A fatty, white lather spreads over the elephants' skin, which is the same color as a corroded penny, greenish-brown and soured. The workmen massage the soap deep into the furrows of the elephants' thumbprint kneecaps and pouched neck flaps, scrubbing it behind the elephants' great fanning ears and working it along their tails.

It takes the men over one quarter-hour to cover as much of the elephants as they can, and they have to use long-handled brushes off the back of the ladder wagons in order to reach the elephants' spines and the backs of their heads. Santana watches the whole process, reverent, and Brittany watches her, the same. When the men finish their job, the elephants look ghostly, like apparitions of themselves, eldritch even in the morning sunshine.

Methuselah cranes his trunk toward the sky, and the sight of him, burnished white and massive against the horizon, steals Santana's breath away.

Brittany must hear her gasp because she gives a short laugh in response.

"It's kind of beautiful, isn't it?" Brittany whispers.

(Santana wholeheartedly agrees.)

Once the workmen finish sudsing the elephants, the firemen loose the valves on the water wagons. Jets of water erupt, white and pressurized, from the hoses, shooting nearly twenty feet into the air in long, feathery rays. As they do so, the circus company cheers and chatters. The little children clap, and Santana claps, too, before she remembers to mind herself.

Apparently, Brittany likes Santana's reaction.

She grins at Santana like Santana is the grandest thing in the world.

The water splatters against the elephants' sides, rebounding from their hard hides in a spray of mist, which catches on the sunlight, scattering prisms over the grass, rainbows winking here and there. The wind picks up some of the water droplets, dispersing it over to where Santana and Brittany stand. It wets their skin, cooling them, feeling like a bit of heaven as the day heats. The elephants smell of damp mulch and aliveness. Santana stands on her tiptoes, to get a better view of them and the fire brigade.

When one of the handlers yells out a _Hup! Hup!_ to the herd, the three elephants all lean forward onto their front legs, tipping so as to balance mostly on their trunks and knees, with their back legs elevated into the air so that they suddenly resemble overturned teapots. As the elephants enact their stunt, the firemen aim their hoses at the elephants' exposed underbellies and tails. Deborah lets out a groan of gratitude.

Though Santana has seen the elephants perform this trick before during circus shows, it still makes her gasp to see it now, executed so trustingly and for such an unusual reason.

"Never a normal day at the circus," Brittany observes, voicing Santana's thoughts.

Once the elephants set back down on all fours, Santana tears her gaze away from them for long enough to look at Brittany and finds her grinning at her like she has a secret.

"You want to help them out with the best part, darlin'?" Brittany asks conspiratorially.

"Help out whom? The elephants?" Santana asks, not following.

"Well, they can't wash their trunks all by themselves," Brittany explains, as if it's just commonsense.

(Maybe it is, at the circus.)

Brittany walks in the direction of the elephants, gesturing for Santana to follow her.

Immediately, the same kind of nervous concern Santana felt watching Brittany scale the elephant pen in Mankato spreads through Santana's chest. Santana shakes her head, holding back and dropping Brittany's hand. Though she finds the elephants strangely beautiful from a safe distance, she still doesn't like the idea of getting close to something as immense and powerful as they are.

"I think I'll just watch this time," she mumbles.

Brittany offers her a kindly smile, neither surprised nor upset that she prefers to keep her distance from the great beasts. "All right, darlin'," Brittany says, continuing toward the elephants, as fearless and happy as ever.

Santana tenses with nervousness, watching Brittany go. Even though Santana trusts that Methuselah and his cows like Brittany well enough, she still worries for Brittany's safety in their presence. She watches with both trepidation and excitement as Brittany treks over to where the elephants bathe, stooping to pluck up a cluster of wild chamomile along the way.

The firemen and handlers don't seem to mind Brittany getting close to the elephants at all; in fact, several of them greet her as she draws to within a few paces of where Methuselah sways, leaning into the water stream as a cat would lean into an ear-scratch.

As Brittany approaches Methuselah, many of the little children run at her heels, including Sam's younger brother and sister. The children chorus Brittany's name and point out the firemen to her, as if she doesn't see them. Brittany wears a grin as bright as the daylight and laughs when Sam's little sister fits their hands together.

(Something tugs in Santana's chest, following after them, though Santana remains rooted in one place.)

Brittany leads the children to within five or six paces of Methuselah and extends her chamomile offering to him. Methuselah makes an appreciative snuffing noise and stretches out his trunk to eat the weeds straight from her hand.

Santana holds her breath, thrilled and anxious, as Methuselah curls the nub of his nose over Brittany's fingers, accepting the flowers from her with surprisingly dexterity and gentleness. While he has his trunk stretched out, the firemen turn their hoses on him, splattering his nose with a cascade of water, also catching Brittany and the children in the process. In a trice, Methuselah's skin turns from saponaceous white to a dark, slated gray.

Santana can hear Brittany's golden laughter ring out, even from a distance.

(Tug, tug, tug again.)

When Brittany reaches forward to scrub the soap from Methuselah's trunk with her hands, Santana presses a hand to her heart, checking to make sure that it hasn't fluttered right out of her chest. Brittany moves like water and light, all ease and grace, standing on tiptoe to rub the round of Methuselah's face, laughing when he wraps his trunk around her waist to hold her upright and steady. She itches her fingers into the deep furrows on Methuselah's face, scratching him the way a boy would his hunting hound. Her arms work in deep, careful circles, reaching everywhere.

(Brittany is so much more for the circus than only a human not-a-target.)

The little children at Brittany's side repeat her trick with Deborah and Bathsheba, feeding them clumps of grass and flowers while the firemen douse the elephants from a distance. Water droplets spangle the children's clothes and faces, and they splash in the puddles forming around the elephants' feet, happy in the grass, happy in the daylight, happy at the circus, happy with Brittany.

Santana feels the same as them.

(Her heart tugs and tugs and tugs.)

* * *

><p>It takes over an hour and a half to bathe three elephants.<p>

In the end, white suds foam over the grass and muddy puddles fill the divots in the earth where the pachyderm bathers once waded. The elephant handlers move their charges to dry ground and wipe the elephants' legs with terry towels. The elephants themselves bellow, relaxed and grateful, in response.

For all the care their handlers give them, Methuselah, Deborah, and Bathsheba almost gleam, as dustless and well-tended as Santana's grandmother's cherry wood coffee table at the bachelor cottage, their hide the same color as wave-slicked rock on a beach, their rough edges wetted down, mannered and strangely elegant. If Santana didn't know better, she would say that the elephants knew how handsome they look, considering how high they hold their heads and how regally they unfurl their trunks against a backdrop of blue sky.

Unlike her elephant friends, Brittany comes away from the bath dirtier rather than cleaner, her thin, tatty sundress saturated with water so that it all but hangs from her lanky frame, her hair slicked and unevenly wet, with a lock of dry, corn silk-blonde here and a lock of damp, goldenrod blonde there. Weeds and stray shoots of grass cling to her bare legs. She couldn't look happier for the mess, though.

"Maybe you should ask Mr. Methuselah if you can borrow one of his towels," Santana teases as Brittany sidles up to her.

"Maybe I should use you for a towel," Brittany teases back. "Your skirt looks nice and dry..."

She makes a feint grab for Santana's waist, and Santana screams, dancing away from her, feeling giddy all of a sudden and sweeter on Brittany than ever before. Santana laughs as Brittany only manages to catch hold of one of the scarves tucked into her belt.

"I thought my nurse told you to take good care of me," Brittany whines.

"That was before you decided to become an elephant groomer. Now that you've taken on such a dangerous profession, there's really nothing I can do for you—your nurse would understand," Santana smirks, and Brittany's mouth falls open in a little gasp.

(She still smiles, though.)

"Come here!" Brittany says, snatching at another one of Santana's scarves, and Santana shrieks, dodging away from her into a patch of tall grass.

"Help!" Santana yelps, already laughing so hard that she can scarcely speak. "Get me the police! The fire brigade!"

"They might hear you, darlin'," Brittany warns, glancing over toward where the firemen coil their hoses atop their ladder wagons. "You don't want to cause a big scene, do you?" She chases Santana further away from the assembled company, her eyes bright with laughter, too.

"You're the one who's chasing me!" Santana reminds her. "Brittany Pierce! If you put muddy handprints all over my costume, Mrs. Schuester will tan my yeller hide!"

"No, she won't. Ken's the one who does the hide-tanning around here—Mrs. Schuester will just stand by and make crazy eyes at him while he does it," Brittany jokes, quickly stooping to wipe her hands against the grass and then grabbing again for Santana's waist.

Both girls laugh, and Santana yelps. They take tall, loping strides over the grass seed heads, running farther away from the wagon bay, deeper into camp, both smiling so widely that their cheeks almost ache from it. Santana knows that Brittany could easily catch her if Brittany had a mind to do it, but the delight is in the chasing, so Brittany dutifully keeps a stride aback from her, both girls tripping through the prairie weeds until they stumble into the white city, still mostly at is foundations.

Breathless, they jog down what will soon be tent rows, hopping over bundles of canvas and poles, laughing like loons at each new stride, and veer toward the trisection of tents where first they spoke to each other, finding it standing, though only a few of the tents around it do the same. Shadows catch them up, suffusing their skin with coolness, painting the angles of their smiling faces. Santana peels to a stop, and Brittany latches onto her by the hands, twirling Santana around in a dizzy circle.

"Caught you, darlin'!" Brittany singsongs, closing the space between them.

Before Santana can say anything about it, Brittany leans forward and presses a quick, light kiss to Santana's lips.

After so much deep kissing yesterday, this quick kiss feels different—like a single dollop of sugar in a full cup of coffee, sweet and special, livening Santana all the way down to her toes. Both girls pull away from it grinning. Brittany's lips are wonderfully cool and wet in contrast to the dry heat of the day.

(Not for the first time, Santana wonders if there will ever come a time when Brittany Pierce doesn't surprise her.)

"What was that for?" Santana asks stupidly.

"I wanted to say hello without putting getting you too wet, darlin'," Brittany says sweetly—so sweetly, in fact, that Santana's heart all but collapses at the sound of Brittany's voice.

Before Santana can make a reply, Brittany spins her again, taking them deeper into the shade between the largest tent in the trisection and the smaller tents beside it. They dance toward Mr. Adams' business tent, stopping within a few steps of it. Brittany stares at Santana with that same keen knowing as always, and Santana shivers, wondering how much of her Brittany can truly see, feeling as if she could truly be anything, just for Brittany's looking.

Santana almost gathers up the courage to kiss the question against Brittany's lips, except that the sound of nearby conversation distracts her.

"... and you really should hear my Lucy sing and play the piano. When we get back to the hotel for the evening, she can put on a recital for you and your son," says Russell Fabray.

"Daddy!" Quinn interjects in the same airy, affected manner that she used when Santana read cards for her father. "I-I really don't think they'd want to listen to little, old me or—"

"Nonsense!" comes Mr. Adams' lion boom. "My Arthur loves music! Just the other day, he determined a new harmonic series using complex mathematics, something about intervals. I'm sure he would find a performance quite diverting."

"I-It's all right, really," Arthur stammers, sounding as gentle and painterly as he did yesterday. "She doesn't have to sing if she doesn't—"

"Lucy doesn't mind!" Mr. Fabray says. "You two really ought to get accustomed to each other. Lucy, you'll sing for Arthur and play the hotel piano for him, too. Maybe a hymn? You do know how I like it so when you sing 'Lead Kindly Light.'"

"Yes, Daddy," Quinn consents in a muffled voice.

Brittany and Santana can't see any of the people involved in the conversation—just hear them through the thin walls of Mr. Adams' business tent. Based on the tinkling sounds of steel spoons setting on bone china and the smells of sweet scones, salted eggs, cured bacon, and marshy tea wafting through the tent canvas, Santana would guess that the Adams and Fabray families have gathered for brunch together. She would also guess that neither Arthur nor Quinn has found this shared meal very agreeable.

"I don't think Lucy and I will stay for the morning show today," says a new voice—a woman whom Santana can only suppose is Mrs. Fabray. "They have a lovely little milliner's shop in town, and I'd like Lucy to have a new hat for Independence Day. I thought it might be quaint if we were to buy a hat from one of these frontier towns, while we're traveling with the circus."

Mr. Fabray answers with a scoffing laugh. "Minnesota and Iowa are hardly the frontier anymore, sugarplum! But I agree: Lucy ought to have a new hat. Make sure to get it with a green ribbon—you do know how I like it when her ribbons match her eyes. I'll send you with some spending money while Mr. Adams and I stay behind. We have some terms to negotiate."

"Yes, concerning rail routes," Mr. Adams chimes in.

Santana imagines both Quinn and Arthur sitting in perfunctory silence for this part of the conversation, neither one of them daring to look at the other or speak as they take dainty bites of egg and sip from their tea cups. Just thinking of how the rules weigh upon them causes Santana to shirk.

When she shudders, Brittany seems to notice it, giving her hand a gentle tug, pulling her toward the business tent.

At first, Santana resists the motion, wondering what Brittany means by taking them nearer to a place where they ought not to trespass, but then she sees Brittany's destination: a plain cloth satchel sitting propped against the outside wall of the tent, several books poking out of it. It occupies the same space that Quinn Fabray did yesterday while she eavesdropped on her father's discussion with Mr. Adams.

Before Santana can mind her face, her eyes widen with excitement. Brittany must catch Santana's look because her expression shifts into her mischievous grin.

"See something you like, darlin'?" she asks quietly.

(It amazes Santana how Brittany can sound so perfectly impish, even at a whisper.)

As soon as the girls draw up close to the satchel, Santana determines that it belongs to Quinn Fabray. _Middlemarch_ shoulders its way out of the bag, and another book rests beside it: _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ by Lewis Carroll, with a cover of light lavender-colored cloth, its title stitched in golden thread across the face. Both books appear well-worn.

(Well-loved.)

Santana has never read _Middlemarch_, but she did read _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ twice when she was twelve years old. She remembers the story quite fondly; it provided her life with some silliness at a time when nothing else in her life seemed sufficiently silly.

Brittany observes Santana's expression, watching Santana look over the book, her own eyes turning strangely soft as she does so. Brittany still wears her mischief-making smirk when she reaches down and snatches up the lavender-colored book from the satchel, turning it over in her hand with a flourish.

Santana starts to protest, to tell Brittany that she oughtn't to touch something which doesn't belong to her—which belongs to someone over her, someone who has the rules on her side—but Brittany just shakes her head.

"We'll put it back before anyone even notices that it's missing, darlin'," Brittany whispers. "Just reading it won't hurt anything at all."

In any given situation, Santana's first instinct is to follow the rules—to not disappoint anyone or cause trouble, to blend in and stay quiet, to make herself no more intrusive than wallpaper or a rug in a well-furnished room—but the wily look on Brittany's face stirs something bold and devil-may-care in her.

She takes the book from Brittany's hands and grins, gesturing Brittany away from the business tent to the northernmost border of the circus camp. Santana thinks it best that she and Brittany find someplace private to go together because, really, if they're going to borrow Quinn Fabray's book, they might as well read it, and if they intend to read it, they ought to go somewhere where they can do so aloud.

The girls take the first several steps in restraint and silence before breaking into a full run and then—once they make it far enough away from Mr. Adams' business tent—a fit of giddy giggling, pleased with themselves for their daring and drunk on bending and hurdling the rules that might otherwise confine their day.

Santana glances over her shoulder at Brittany and sees Brittany's face, sun bright and graced with the most careless grin. Brittany laughs and something flips over in Santana's belly, thrilling her.

Between bathing the elephants and stealing a book, Brittany has never looked more beautiful than she has today. Her hair has begun to dry in the wind, wavy in ribbons, and her eyes shine with something Santana finds familiar but which she couldn't name, even to the price of one-hundred dollars. Brittany wears happiness like the finest clothing and couldn't be freer if she were a bird taken to wing.

The girls traverse the last bit of circus pitch before emerging beyond a final row of tents into a great, unoccupied part of nature, where low hills roll. Brittany finally outstrips Santana and leads her up a sloping hammock spangled with wildflowers and carpeted with verdant cutgrass. White shooting stars, pale purple beardtongue, and little belled Jacob's Ladder scale the hammock, crushing under the girls' feet until they collapse at the hammock's crest, out-of-breath but still laughing.

Santana opens the book in her hands to a random page.

"You know what Mr. Carroll would have to say about all this, don't you, Britt?" she teases, mastering her breath.

Brittany stares at Santana, her mouth open in a grin.

_"'You may not have lived much under the sea'—'I haven't,' said Alice—'and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster'—Alice began to say 'I once tasted...' but checked herself hastily, and said 'No, never'—'so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is!'"_ Santana reads and both she and Brittany laugh.

"Lobster Quadrille?" Brittany repeats after she sufficiently recovers from her giggle fit, quirking an eyebrow, turning the sound of the words over on her tongue.

"When I first read this," Santana admits, "I thought that quadrille must be a sort of French food. I had to ask Abuela what it was, and she told me it was a dance."

Santana flushes a little, admitting her gaffe to Brittany, but Brittany only looks at Santana as if Santana has just said something sweet.

"It sounds like a card game to me," Brittany offers. She glances between Santana and the open book. "You've read this book before?"

The awe in her voice causes Santana to blush.

Rereading a book wasn't such an unusual practice at the bachelor cottage, but it probably does seem peculiar to someone who lives a circus life, surrounded by colors and elephants and audiences, with more to entertain her than just printed words on a page.

"It's not my favorite," Santana says, looking down at the flowers at her elbows, rather than at Brittany, whose warm attention will only cause Santana to blush more deeply. "But it is droll. It's a fun story to imagine."

"So you like to read?" Brittany asks gently, looking as curious as Alice to hear Santana's answer.

With anyone else, Santana might feel too embarrassed to admit how much she loves reading, but with Brittany, she only blushes a little bit and shrugs, shy but not ashamed.

"I like reading very much," she answers softly, looking down at the worn cloth cover of the book in her hands. "Abuela and I got along well enough at the bachelor cottage, but things could be lonely with just the two of us there, excepting the old gardener. Books gave me company—I always felt like I had somewhere to go and someone to go with when I had something to read."

She checks Brittany's reaction and finds Brittany watching her with the deepest eyes Santana has ever seen, looking somehow faraway, as if she's remembering something, but also so, so close to Santana, like she can feel the meaning behind Santana's words almost better than she can hear it.

"You must have read a thousand books," Brittany says, and it's less a question than an observation. She sounds utterly reverent.

Santana smiles. "Something like that," she avers.

"So you've had a thousand adventures," Brittany says, and Santana almost starts at the unexpectedness of hearing a knife thrower's daughter refer to something as utterly ordinary as a book as a bonafide adventure.

(To someone who grows up in the circus, the mundanity of the bachelor cottage must somehow seem a mystery.)

(To someone who grows up in the bachelor cottage, the girl who grows up in the circus is a mystery in herself.)

Heat blooms over Santana's skin, and she feels squirrelly from Brittany watching her so closely. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and laughs a bit at herself for being so flustered.

"Alice has a good adventure," she says, hoping to draw Brittany's attention from herself and back onto the book, if she can. "Here," she flips to the sixth chapter and searches through the pages until she finds a particular passage. She passes the book to Brittany for inspection. "Read this."

Brittany doesn't accept the book from Santana. Instead, she glances between where Santana's finger presses on the page and Santana's face—her eyes, then mouth, then eyes again—her expression still strangely reverent.

"You read it, darlin'," she says in a low voice.

Somehow, she sounds like she's never wanted anything quite as much as just to listen to Santana read. She stares into Santana's face, seeing Santana in the sort of fathomless way that no one else has ever done before her. She licks her lips and waits.

Under Brittany's attention, the moment feels hot and thick, like melted honey.

Santana swallows and tears her eyes away from Brittany to observe the page. Sunlight glares upon the paper, so that Santana has to squint to read.

_"'Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'  
><em>_'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.  
><em>_'I don't much care where-' said Alice.  
><em>_'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.  
><em>_'-so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.  
><em>_'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'"_

Santana pauses to check Brittany's response to the passage and finds Brittany staring at her with the same peculiar, adoring expression that she wore yesterday after Santana sneezed on the train, her mouth open in a little _o_ and her eyes so soft that Santana could sink into them.

When Santana catches Brittany's eye, Brittany laughs her silent laugh, amused at something, and glances quickly away, too bashful to stare any longer. Her long, graceful fingers curl around a tuft of Jacob's Ladder, and she plucks the flowers up by the stem.

"You're really good at that," she says, giving another one of her artless compliments.

(Something squeezes inside Santana's chest.)

"Thanks," Santana says stupidly.

Brittany smirks. "Alice really shouldn't ask a cat for advice, though," she says matter-of-factly, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Is that so?" Santana laughs, eager to hear Brittany's reasoning.

Brittany nods. "Cats are like walking riddles," she explains. "You can't expect something so slinky to give you a straight answer about anything. She should have asked a mule instead. Or a Jersey cow—they're sturdy."

Santana almost can't stand it, adoring Brittany so much, and falls back where she sits, collapsing onto a blanket of wildflowers.

"Britt!" she whines, complaining because Brittany is so perfect.

Brittany continues to play with the Jacob's Ladder, twining it between her fingers. "What?" she says innocently, though she knows very well that she's delighted Santana and even blushes because she has. She tries to suppress her pleased smile but fails most wonderfully.

"You're not fair sometimes," Santana pouts.

"You should keep reading," Brittany says, shaking her hair over her face in a vain attempt to hide her pinked cheeks and thrilled expression.

For a second, Santana considers sitting up to kiss Brittany—on the nose and cheek and finally at her lips—but then she feels too shy to do it, even though she kissed Brittany yesterday inside the tent. She settles for nudging her toes against Brittany's leg instead, teasing Brittany as she wishes herself braver all the while. Reluctantly, she starts to read again, promising herself that she'll work up the courage to kiss Brittany before they return the book to its satchel, jittering a little just at the thought of it.

Brittany braids garlands of wildflowers while Santana recounts to her the events of the Mad Hatter's tea party, the fanciful tale of the Dormouse, and the Queen's gardeners painting the royal roses red.

Just as Santana reaches the line where the Queen appears and the gardeners panic, Brittany reaches up to Santana, crowning Santana with her handiwork, her funny cat-smile quirked at the corners of her mouth.

"Her Majesty Queen Cleopatra," Brittany announces regally.

Santana laughs and claps the book shut, keeping her thumb in it to hold her place. The flowers feel cool and light on her brow. When she looks up through her eyelashes, she can see little blue and white wisps of them. She straightens her neck, so as to keep the crown upon her head and Brittany seems delighted at her for doing so.

"Do you want a turn to read?" Santana asks, extending the book to Brittany, tempting her to accept it. She sets the book down on the grass beside Brittany's hand.

(Santana loves listening to Brittany talk about anything.)

(She can only imagine how much she would like listening to Brittany talk of mad croquet matches and mock turtles.)

Brittany's eyes shift from Santana's eyes to Santana's mouth to the book and back to Santana's eyes again. Brittany bites her lip between her teeth, pinking it, and shakes her head, modest, no.

"I can't read, darlin'," she says quietly, fingers curling around a patch of grass shoots at her elbow. She looks away from Santana to her own knees, still stretched out on her side, as if reclined on a fainting couch.

Though Santana has only known Brittany a very few days, she already knows Brittany well enough to discern Brittany's embarrassment. Somehow, Brittany's embarrassment piques Santana's embarrassment—not because Brittany ought to feel embarrassed that she can't read, but because Santana oughtn't to have asked Brittany something that would embarrass Brittany for not being able to. Santana's father taught her better than to assume that everyone has enjoyed the same school lessons as she has, after all.

Santana reaches for something to say, like a child scrambling to pick up marbles spilled from a bag before they can all roll off in all different directions, disappearing under furniture and tucking into corners.

"I could teach you someday," she blurts, but then she worries the she sounds condescending and adds, "—if you like."

Brittany looks at Santana as if Santana is some sort of miracle, such deep devotion in her eyes that Santana thinks she could melt for it.

"I'd like that a lot, darlin'," Brittany says in a low, fervent voice Santana has never heard her use before. It tugs at that place in Santana's chest again. For a long while, Santana and Brittany just stare at each other, forgetting the sun overhead and the book lying between them and anything except for the fact that they've just made a promise to each other.

(For Santana to teach Brittany to read.)

(It feels like something else.)

"Give it back."

The sound of Quinn Fabray's throaty voice returns Santana to the moment, recalling to her the world outside of her and Brittany's promise, reminding her that there exists a circus and people at the circus and that she and Brittany stole Quinn's book.

Her heart beats so fast that she worries it might run away from her.

"I suppose you two think you're very funny, don't you, stealing my book?" Quinn says, arriving at the summit of the hammock, holding her skirt up at her ankles and wearing a knife-sharp expression. She stares down at Brittany and Santana, reclined upon their bed of wildflowers and grass. "Well, you're not even amusing. Give the book back."

She holds out a hand to them, like a bridge-keeper waiting for a traveler to pay some toll.

For a second, Santana remains supine and flabbergasted on the ground, feeling terribly caught and guilty for stealing from the daughter of the man who intends to buy the circus, but then Brittany scrambles to her feet at Santana's side, and Santana remembers how silly it is to stay sitting when a standing person requires one's attention. She scrambles to her feet, as well, Brittany's flower garland drooping down over her right ear but remaining on her head otherwise.

If Quinn tells her father or Mr. Adams about Brittany and Santana's indiscretion, they may well fire Brittany and Santana from the circus or even have them taken to jail.

Or at least they might do that to Santana.

"We were going to put it back!" Santana blurts, as much to remind herself as to explain herself to Quinn Fabray.

Quinn just raises one of her perfect eyebrows, her expression steely. She scrutinizes Santana from head to toe, truly acknowledging Santana as entity for one of the first times since they first met each other the other day in Worthington.

"Let me guess," Quinn says flatly, "you two just happened to find my satchel outside the tent, and you thought you would borrow my book without asking so that Miss Pierce could read while you shirked off whatever kind of chores it is you're supposed to be doing before the morning show. Is that it?"

She sounds entirely disbelieving and entirely accusatory and has almost everything right except for just one thing.

"I wasn't reading to Santana," Brittany says, as if the distinction makes all the difference in the world. "She was reading to me."

Apparently, it does make some difference in the world, at least, because Quinn's mouth actually falls open in the same way that it did when Brittany refused to give an interview to her at the trisection of tents. Quinn gapes at Santana as if she's never seen Santana or even anyone like to Santana before.

(Maybe she hasn't.)

"You can read?" Quinn asks Santana, astounded.

She sounds distinctly impressed.

Before Santana can answer Quinn, Brittany sidles up beside Santana.

"Santana loves to read," Brittany says in her just-so way. "She's read about a thousand books, and she can still remember the best parts, even from books that aren't her favorite."

It's the kind of observation that only someone who watches a person carefully for a long time and learns her secrets can make. A strange note rings through Brittany's voice. Santana would almost call the note pride, except that she can't think of a reason why it would be that.

"Is that true?" Quinn asks, not as a challenge but genuinely seeking confirmation. She glances between Brittany and Santana, awed.

"I love to read," Santana says quietly, looking down at her toes tangled amidst the Jacob's Ladder and beardtongue.

"She's really good at it," Brittany confirms.

(It sounds so much like something else.)

Quinn couldn't look more reverenced if she were to learn that Santana was actually a long-lost Spanish princess. Her pretty green eyes sweep over Santana again, seeing her anew. Momentarily, Quinn resembles a toddler recognizing her own reflection in the mirror for the first time in her life. She takes a step back from Brittany and Santana, situating herself further down the hammock from them.

"I didn't know that your people could—," Quinn starts but then trails away, perhaps remembering the indignation with which Brittany reacted when she made reference to such conventions before.

Brittany stoops down, retrieving _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ from the grass. She offers it to Quinn, totally docile.

"Thank you for letting us borrow your book," she says kindly. "I liked the part with the talking cat."

Quinn takes the book back, staring at the cover as if she's the one in Wonderland and her book is the only thing she brought with her from home when she fell down the rabbit hole. Her usual walls seem in a state of disrepair; Santana can read Quinn's every emotion written plainly on her face.

"Thank you, Miss Fabray," Santana says quietly, as well, and that seems to break the spell.

Quinn jolts.

"Good day," she says shortly, offering Brittany and Santana a single curt nod before retreating down the hammock, disappearing as quickly as she had appeared, seeming quite a bit smaller going than she did coming.

_("Drink me.")_

* * *

><p>It catches Santana off-guard when, in the next instant after Quinn takes leave, Brittany curls around Santana's body, setting her head on Santana's shoulder in the same way that an old dog might set his muzzle on a front porch, comfortable and worn-in. Brittany wraps an arm around Santana's waist.<p>

Suddenly, everything is Brittany all over—her windswept scent, the hard and soft places of her body, the slight dampness lingering in her clothing and the tips of her hair. She holds Santana from behind, taking a deep breath against her, and relaxes slightly. It's the second time today that Brittany has gathered Santana up in this way.

At first, Santana tenses, thinking about rules and being unaccustomed to sharing her space with anyone—and perhaps especially Brittany, who has such an intense effect on her person that she can scarcely account for it—but then Santana sinks into the closeness, finding it wonderfully agreeable.

(It feels so much like being home.)

"I didn't mean to scare you, darlin'," Brittany mumbles, lips so close to Santana's skin that Santana can feel the barest hint of them upon her.

"Scare me?" Santana repeats, stupid with so much Brittany all around her.

"I really thought we'd get the book back in the bag before she saw it was missing," Brittany explains, nuzzling a bit closer to Santana. "I know you don't like getting in trouble with anyone, darlin'. You're so sweet that when someone acts sour to you, you don't know what to do about it."

Even though no one else but Brittany would call Santana sweet—or at least no one at the circus, or no one living—Santana can almost believe that she is sweet, just for the sound of Brittany's words in her ear. The tugging feeling in Santana's chest grows more insistent, as if Brittany has Santana's heart on a string and leads it along after her wherever she goes.

"I didn't mean to make Quinn sour at us. I'll try not to get us in trouble so much," Brittany continues, making a promise to Santana just as Santana made a promise to her.

(It feels so much like something else.)

(Santana strokes the thread ring on her finger, absentminded.)

"It's all right," Santana purrs, allowing herself to close her eyes, just for a second, and sink further into Brittany, memorizing the feel of Brittany's arms around her, Brittany holding her safe and sound. "You didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one who read for so long anyway."

It catches Santana off-guard again to feel Brittany shudder behind her then, like she held in some worry and Santana just named it, setting it free.

"Are you sure?" Brittany asks in a very small voice.

Santana turns a bit in Brittany's arms and finds Brittany pouting at her, looking so concerned and forlorn that Santana wonders if her own heart might break just for seeing Brittany's face. Clearly, Brittany thinks that what Quinn said upset Santana more than it did.

"Oh, Britt," Santana says. "It's all right—honest. I don't think Quinn will even snitch on us anyway."

And it's the truth.

When Quinn first approached Brittany and Santana, she traveled by way of the warpath, but by the time Quinn quit Brittany and Santana's company, she seemed to have softened. It would surprise Santana if Quinn even mentioned the borrowed book to her father or Mr. Adams at this point. Santana wishes that Brittany wouldn't fret about it and tries to tell Brittany as much just by looking at her.

At first, Brittany's pout remains firmly in place, even when Santana offers her a reassuring smile, but then Santana spots the faintest ghost of a grin starting at the corners of Brittany's mouth. Santana crosses her eyes at Brittany, making a funny face for her, and finally Brittany's lips twitch, giving her away.

Now that Santana knows that she can coax Brittany to smile if she tries, she adopts a mock seriousness. "Britt," she says solemnly, "you know I get in trouble no matter what I do around here."

And that's what really does it.

Brittany's pout breaks into a smile that reaches all the way to Brittany's eyes, and Brittany's laughs into Santana's hair, her fingers digging into Santana's waist, tickling her.

"You are trouble, darlin'!" Brittany teases.

Santana shrieks and squirms away, the flower garland slipping down almost over her eyes as she twists to the side.

"You're not fair!" she yelps, snaking away.

"Of course I'm fair, darlin'! I gave you a head start!"

And so Brittany and Santana race.

Their momentum carries them all the way down the hammock, and they continue across the ley, running so quickly that they scarcely crush any wildflowers underfoot. Somewhere along the line, Santana's garland falls to the grass, but neither she nor Brittany stops to retrieve it.

The girls reenter the camp at a sprint, finding the white city much more established now than it was before they made off with Quinn's book. Eventually, they skitter to a stop just outside the mess pit, probably because they both know that they really ought to do some chores today now that they've had their fun and also because Brittany promised that she would keep Santana out of trouble.

(And also because they're out of breath.)

"You up to making lunch?" Brittany pants, doubled-over, her hands resting upon her knees, her cheeks a rosy, vivid pink.

Santana nods her consent, too winded and exhilarated to offer a real reply.

* * *

><p>Ma Jones fails to hide her incredulity when Brittany and Santana turn up in her mess pit looking for work to do.<p>

"Y'all want to help make lunch?" she repeats, as if she can't quite make sense of their words.

She looks up from the cast iron pot she scrubs with a fat-bristled brush, glancing between Brittany and Santana like she's never seen them before.

"Does a Jersey cow want to tell it straight to Alice?" Brittany replies, wearing her blank joking face.

(Santana laughs; Ma Jones doesn't.)

Ma considers Brittany and Santana carefully, searching them for any hint of funny business. When she can find none on them, she stands up from her bench. Though Santana might expect Ma to ask where she and Brittany spent their morning hiding, Ma does nothing of the sort. Rather, she gestures toward a basket sitting on one of the tables and shows the girls its contents: namely, a bushel of carrots.

"Well, I could use some more hands around here," she says charily. "If y'all wouldn't mind peeling these, I'd be much obliged."

She rustles some paring knives and an aluminum bucket out of the chuck for them.

"You can sit over there," she says.

She gestures to a bench far away from her and her kitchen girls, then pauses for a second, mustering something. Her gaze shifts between Brittany and Santana, lingering briefly over Brittany's injured left ear, just barely visible with Brittany's hair parted around it, before it settles upon their two faces.

"You did get your supper last night, didn't you?" Ma asks.

(If Santana didn't know better, she would say Ma sounded concerned.)

"We did," Brittany confirms. "Sam brought it to us."

"Thank you for sending him," Santana adds.

Ma peers at Brittany and Santana for a second longer. The shadow of some unnamable emotion passes over her face, and she seems almost as if she wants to ask them another question. As it is, she simply nods in approval and resumes scrubbing her pot, indicating that Santana and Brittany should start their work. Maybe Santana imagines it, but she could swear Ma mutters a muffled _You're welcome_ as she and Brittany start to walk away.

Santana would attribute Ma's sudden new kindness toward her and Brittany to pity for Brittany's injury, except that Ma's good mood seems to extend beyond that. As Brittany and Santana situate themselves, their basket of carrots, and the aluminum bucket on the designated bench, Ma returns to her own work, humming as she goes.

(She has a surprisingly pleasant voice for someone who spends so much of her day snapping at people.)

Whereas normally Ma remains somewhat aloof from her girls' gossip, today she happily joins them, prattling on about how Mr. Adams sent a commission of hostlers to Correctionville a full day in advance to ask the fire brigade to help out with washing the elephants and did so in grand style, sounding airy and light as she talks. Santana has never seen Ma Jones so pleasantly affected before; she can only conclude that something must have happened to put her in such a fine mood—or, rather, that someone did something to do so.

Seeing Ma in gay spirits amuses Santana. She smiles as she sinks her paring knife into the waxy rind of a carrot, carving away from her body and into the bucket. Under the bench, her toes and Brittany's toes nudge together in the grass. Brittany smiles at Santana from across the way, and the tugging feeling in Santana's chest returns. She entirely misses the bucket with the first peeling, dropping it onto the ground instead.

(Brittany only laughs at her a little.)

A warm, eager feeling washes over Santana at the sound of Brittany's voice. She can't believe her luck to have spent two mornings in a row with Brittany. Everything that happens seems so much nicer with Brittany involved in it. Santana wishes that she and Brittany could stay together always and that Brittany never had to disappear to wherever it is that Brittany goes between the performances and at mealtimes.

"Are you planning to eat lunch with the company?" Santana asks, fluttery and nervous all of a sudden.

Brittany quirks her head to one side, reading Santana in the deeply thoughtful way that is her province. She scrunches up her nose and Santana feels a sweet pang play through her whole self.

"If you'd like that, I will," Brittany says and Santana nods because she would like that very much, feeling all wrapped up in Brittany and entirely sweet on her. Santana can't think of anything better than having Brittany around at mealtime. She grins, brimming over with a feeling she can't quite name.

_In a cavern, in a canyon,  
><em>_excavating for a mine,  
><em>_dwelt a miner forty-niner  
><em>_and his daughter Clementine_

When Ma Jones starts to sing, it causes Santana to jolt—mainly because Santana had forgotten that there was anyone else in the world aside from herself and Brittany for the moment.

Ma Jones has the voice of a goddess.

Whereas Rachel Berry clearly benefits from years of training, Ma's singing seems unpolished and like the best kind of accident. Santana hadn't known that Ma could sing at all, let alone like this—like the rumble of thunder, deep from inside her chest. While Rachel Berry sings in a high, agile soprano, Ma Jones sings like fire, her voice full and robust in timbre.

(Santana hadn't known that two like things could be so different, and yet each one beautiful in its own way.)

The song Ma sings sounds both happy and sad at once. It tells the story of the daughter of a miner—_light she was, and like a fairy_—who falls into some water driving ducklings out to swim and drowns because her beloved can't come to save her. Though the song seems serious enough at first, Santana quickly realizes that it's a parody. It isn't familiar to Santana at all.

_Oh my darling, oh my darling  
><em>_Oh my darling, Clementine!  
><em>_Thou art lost and gone forever  
><em>_Dreadful sorry, Clementine_

Ma seems almost oblivious to her own singing, but everyone else stops for the sound of it, transfixed.

Two supes enter the mess area just as Ma finishes the chorus, carrying a bench between them. They arrange it at the side of the fire, grunting as they work.

"That's an awful pretty song, Ma," one of them—Shane, the wagon driver—says.

Shane tips his hat to her as he and his companion—the yeller supe who tackled the preacher on the midway—shuffle the bench into place. Shane wears an affable smile, the corners of his pencil mustache turned up. Ma Jones smiles back at him, though not brightly.

"Thank you kindly," Ma mumbles.

The supes leave the mess area once they get the bench in place, and Ma takes up her song again, though she sings more quietly than she did before. Santana seeks out Ma's voice over the babble of the camp—above the gossipy giggling of Ma's kitchen girls, the bone-snap crackling of the mess fire, the skittering whine of bug wings, ghost voices carried on the wind, twittering birdsongs, the iron knells of hammers ringing out near the big top—feeling it almost more than she hears it.

The song rousts something deep within Santana; she doesn't think she's ever heard anything so beautiful before, even when Rachel sings for her act.

Eventually, Brittany seems to notice Santana's shift in attention. She nudges Santana's foot, playful, coaxing Santana to look at her. When Santana does just that, she finds Brittany fixing her with a delighted grin.

(Bright.)

"How's Wonderland, darlin'?" Brittany teases.

"Swell," Santana says, entirely serious.

"She sings prettier than Rachel does, most days," Brittany says reverently and both she and Santana listen, enraptured by Ma's song.

* * *

><p>Ma makes it through two more verses before none other than Sam Evans appears on the edge of the mess area, holding his hat in his hands, his face already made up in show paint and looking especially bright and eager.<p>

Rather than announcing his presence outright, Sam takes a few steps toward Ma, who has her back turned to him, and begins to sing along with her, lending his voice to her tune.

_One day the wind was blowing awful  
><em>_I took her down some old rye wine  
><em>_and listened to the sweetest cooings  
><em>_of my sunflower Clementine_

_Oh, my Clema! Oh, my Clema!  
><em>_Oh, my darling Clementine  
><em>_Now you are gone and lost forever  
><em>_I'm dreadful sorry Clementine_

When Sam's voice joins Ma's, Ma straightens where she sits, but she doesn't turn around or stop from her singing. Her girls giggle, chattering like starlings. Sam's song seems different than Ma's, just a shade off in melody, telling a story similar to hers but not the same. It surprises Santana how well the two disparate tunes blend together, Sam's warm baritone braiding with Ma's pleasant thunder.

At the last note, Ma finally turns to look at Sam.

"Ken says you could use some help shifting barrels," he says sweetly, wringing his hat between his hands.

(It sounds entirely like something else.)

* * *

><p>Somewhere between Ma instructing Sam on how to combine the various barrels of beans to her satisfaction and Sam almost tripping over his outsized clown shoes to snap to the job, Brittany devises a game wherein she and Santana attempt to fling their carrot peelings into the bucket from a distance, and she proves immeasurably better at her own device than does Santana.<p>

"Are you sure you've got both eyes open, darlin'?" Brittany teases when Santana manages to drop another wet carrot peeling at her own toes rather than into the aluminum bucket sitting two feet away from her on the grass.

Brittany flings her carrot peeling into the bucket with ease.

Santana pouts. "What's your secret, Britt?"

Brittany shrugs, wearing her mischievous smile. "Good aim just runs in the family, I guess," she says slyly. Something flickers behind her eyes and then fades.

Santana would argue, but Brittany's answer seems reasonable enough. Santana tosses another carrot peeling, missing her mark spectacularly.

"It's harder for lefties," she grouses, and Brittany laughs and laughs.

* * *

><p>It takes longer peeling the carrots while playing the game than it would otherwise, so that by the time Brittany and Santana finish with their chore, it's nearly lunchtime. Ma orders them to pick their wayward carrot scraps out of the grass before she'll allow them wash up and scolds them—albeit much less harshly than she usually would do so—for wasting time with their horseplay.<p>

Sam refills his last barrel from the chuck just as Brittany and Santana make it over to the steel tubs to wash the wet, orange carrot castoff from their hands. They listen as he asks Ma Jones if he can do anything else to help around them kitchen and she teases him that he only means to stick around so that he can steal some food before the bell rings.

Santana feels strangely guilty listening in on Sam and Ma talking to each other, even about something as harmless as lunch. She looks down at the ground so as not to intrude, focusing on the little beetles crawling in the grass, trying to forget the bright way in which Sam and Ma look at each other and remember the rules instead.

When the company finally assembles for their meal, Brittany and Santana are some of the first persons to fill their plates. Today, Ma Jones serves a mash of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and dried apples, all which appears a dull, flushed-out white in color, save it were the few carrot coins that Brittany and Santana peeled. The girls take back their seat on the far bench and sit facing across from one another, stirring at their food and waiting for it to cool.

"You didn't grab me a plate, ladybird?"

Santana had forgotten that Noah Puckerman existed until he spoke.

She jumps as Puck sits down on the bench beside her, wearing a pout and looking enviously at her and Brittany's plates. He squints through the intense noonday sunlight, sweating around his brow and eyes.

"Where have you been?" Santana asks, voice coming out much more harshly than she means it to.

Brittany glances between Santana and Puck, pretty cat eyes vivid with a reaction Santana can't read.

"Just got back from town. I told you before I left," Puck rebuffs. "I'll have you know that you're famous around here, ladybird."

"Famous?"

Puck nods, satisfied that he seems to have won Santana's attention now. "You sure are. I heard all the bitties at the store and all the fellas at the bar talking about 'the mystical Madame Rossetti' who predicted the death of the Minnesota millionaire."

At Puck's word, a panic starts to build in Santana; her pulse picks up and she feels wobbly inside. "Were they really talking about me?" she asks, hoping that maybe Puck only means to tease her.

"They sure were," Puck says, seeming pleased, as if he finds Santana's new celebrity favorable.

It takes Santana a second to remember that to Puck—and to Mr. Adams and to the circus, in general—any fame Santana wins for herself means an increase in sales. Puck doesn't wait for Santana to respond to his news before he stands up from the bench, setting a heavy palm on her shoulder.

"I'm going to go grab myself a plate," he says, stepping away from the bench with nary a nod to either Santana or Brittany.

"You all right, darlin'?" Brittany asks as soon as Puck disappears into the lunch crowd. "You look green."

Santana tries to swallow her apprehension, but when she speaks, her voice still shakes: "I'll have to read cards today," she says warily. "I'll have to tell someone he's going to die."

Brittany's mouth falls open in a little _o_. It obviously alarms her to hear Santana speak so frankly concerning the cards and their effect. Brittany's eyes dart between Santana's, like Brittany doesn't quite know where to look at her. After a second, they settle. Brittany closes her mouth and fixes Santana with an even stare.

"No, you won't," she says, strangely sure.

Santana knows that Brittany wants to comfort her, and she adores Brittany for her kindness, but she also cannot shake her dread just for Brittany's word. The Correctionville crowds will clamor for Santana to read tarot, and chances are that no trespassing preachers will appear on the midway to save Santana from her fate today. Santana will have to read, and when she reads, she'll draw Death. When she draws Death, her patron will die.

Suddenly, Santana doesn't feel hungry at all.

"But I will, Britt. It always happens that way," Santana says glumly.

Brittany shakes her head and starts to smile a bit. Her sudden shift in demeanor surprises Santana, who can't reckon why Brittany seems so pleased with herself, at this particular moment. Brittany nudges her knee against Santana's at the side of the bench.

"It doesn't have to happen that way, though," Brittany says excitedly. She leans in closer to Santana—Santana gasps at the new proximity and wonders for a second if Brittany means to kiss her, even with so many other people around—and lowers her voice. "You're in the circus now, darlin'. So why don't you put on a show?"

Santana scrunches up her brow. Brittany seems to have some sort of idea, and though Santana doesn't understand what it is yet, she feels a thrill realizing that Brittany does have an idea all the same.

"What kind of show?" Santana asks, matching Brittany's whisper.

Brittany grins her troublemaking grin and leans in even closer to Santana, so that their cheeks nearly brush together. "What if you lost your cards today?"

It isn't a question as much as a suggestion.

Realization dawns over Santana.

"Brittany, I couldn't!" she demurs. "Mr. Adams paid for them—!"

"You wouldn't have to really lose them," Brittany interjects. "You could just hide them and pretend to lose them when you get to the fair. Ken and Mr. Adams would never have to know. You could pretend that someone stole them—that way, no one could get mad at you," she says knowingly. She shrugs one shoulder, "You can't read cards if you don't have cards, right?"

Santana tries to think through the potential liabilities to Brittany's plan, not because she wants to reject it, but because she has it in her nature to worry and to not want to get herself into trouble.

Of course, it would be a lie for Santana to tell Mr. Adams and the others that someone had stolen her cards when really she had only hidden them herself. But, then again, everyone at the circus seems to carry around a lie of some sort, and this lie would prove particularly harmless—benevolent, even—perhaps even more so than the lie wherewith Santana pretends to be Noah Puckerman's wife.

(Puck says that the truth doesn't matter anymore.)

Momentarily, Santana wonders what would happen if Mr. Adams were to discover her falsehood, but then she reasons that he never would discover it, if she hid her deck away deep inside her valise where no one ever looks but her—not even Puck.

At the very least, pretending to lose her cards would spare Santana from having to read them today, and that in itself might save a life. Surely Santana could feel justified telling one lie if it would prevent her from drawing Death for a day.

"Right," she says slowly, Brittany's mischievous smile catching at her mouth, as well.

For a long moment, she and Brittany stare at each other, grinning like fools for Brittany's cleverness and for Santana's renewed hope.

It's only when Puck returns bearing his plate that Santana realizes that Brittany's hand had slid over hers on the bench and shifts away from Brittany's touch, suddenly conscious of rules, rules, rules. Puck eyes both Brittany and Santana, wary of whatever secret they keep, but doesn't ask them about it.

(What he doesn't ask can't hurt him.)

"You'll steal the show, darlin'," Brittany promises. She wears delighted expression, like the child who managed to sneak candy from a Christmas tin without her parents catching her at it. Santana finds that she can breathe again just watching her.

Thank goodness for Brittany saving her.

(Thank every star in the sky.)

* * *

><p>Eating lunch beside both Puck and Brittany proves strangely amusing for Santana. While Puck jaws on about how the general store in Correctionville only carries two brands of aftershave, one of which smells like "horse piss," according to him, Brittany and Santana mostly ignore his ranting, with Brittany drawing shapes in the grass with her toes and Santana guessing what the shapes signify, mouthing her answers to Brittany while Puck keeps his back turned.<p>

"So I ask the shopkeeper if they've got anything other than the stuff on the shelf—"

_A cat?_

_Yes._

"—and he says that he can check in back. Turns out, they have the brand I prefer, they just hadn't stocked it out front yet. He charged me a whole dollar for it, but I'd say it's worth it if it means I don't have to smell like a barnyard—"

_The moon?_

_No._

"—so I paid him square for it. I tell you, ladybird, sometimes it's expensive, just to be civilized."

_A heart?_

_Yes._

"Ladybird, are you even listening?"

_(No, no, no.)_

* * *

><p>Saying goodbye to Brittany is a tragic affair, even though Brittany and Santana promise to meet up with each other at the show, if they can, and even though they've spent the whole morning in each other's company. The girls stand in the shadow of the chuck while Puck takes their plates to the wash tubs for them, and Brittany throws her arms around Santana's neck, burying her face in Santana's hair.<p>

"I'm jealous that you get to spend all day with you. I miss you before you even leave," she mumbles.

Santana sinks into Brittany's body, warm even in the shadow of the chuck, and breathes in Brittany's summer day scent, wanting to memorize it, to carry it with her always.

She nods, "Me, too."

When the warning bell rings and Puck comes to lead Santana away, Brittany slips her hand down Santana's arm, linking their pinky fingers, and gives Santana's pinky a little squeeze.

"Remember: You're gonna steal the show, darlin'," she says in her just-so way.

Santana hopes that Brittany is right and that her plan will work.

(Brittany has never given Santana bad advice before.)

* * *

><p>Puck steers Santana down the tent rows, holding her by the elbow with one rough hand. His touch feels off, like it doesn't belong, but Santana doesn't shake him from her; she just keeps walking. Santana mutters to Puck that she needs to adjust her costume before the show and so Puck waits outside the tent, letting her alone inside, presumably to change her clothing.<p>

(What Puck doesn't ask can't hurt him.)

Santana shuts the tent flaps behind herself. She sinks into the shade and privacy of the tent. With shaking breath, she crouches down beside her belongings, removing her tarot deck from its beaded sack and then hiding the cards in the belly of her valise beneath her old street clothes and inside one of her shoes. She feels like she's trespassing somewhere where she ought not to be, doing this, and trembles with anxiousness, willing Puck to remain out-of-doors for as long as she needs to work her deception.

With the cards most definitely "lost," Santana cinches up her peacock-colored knapsack, drawing a deep breath as she prepares to put on an act keen enough to fool Puck, to fool Ken, to fool her patrons, and to fool the whole circus.

"You ready, ladybird?" Puck asks as Santana emerges from the tent, knapsack in hand, and she nods, more in hope than affirmation.

It turns out to be surprisingly easy for Santana to convince Ken and her audience that someone stole the cards.

Santana milks the time leading up to the fair, setting up her booth, unfurling her knapsack and spreading it as a tablecloth, setting the now-empty beaded sack at the corner of the table, smoothing down her skirt, rearranging the bangles at her wrist, and finally setting down to read just as the first patrons crowd into a queue at the front her booth. She swallows her apprehension, eyes flickering between Ken and the crowd.

She's in the circus now.

Today, Santana draws a queue so long that it stretches down the midway. It includes probably over three-hundred people—a thoroughly impressive number, considering Correctionville's modest size.

Just as Puck reported, the crowd babbles with talk of what happened in St. James, whispering Mr. Hammond's name and making mention of Santana's powers as a diviner of the future. They stare at her with wide, wary eyes, checking for the devil on her shoulder and the angel at her back. Santana wonders what they see; she knows what she feels.

_"Soy una actriz,"_ she whispers to herself as the first patron steps up for his reading.

When he asks her for a card reading, she nods dutifully and reaches for the beaded sack at the edge of her table. Her hand falls over the fabric, collapsing it. The sack clearly holds nothing. Santana furrows her brow, painting confusion across her face as one might paint watercolor swatches across a canvas. She lifts the sack from the tabletop and shows it, clearly empty. When she speaks, she remembers to mind her accent.

"What? The cards!" she says, slinging a helpless look to Ken as the crowd around her begins to murmur.

"Is something the matter, miss?" asks her patron.

"The cards!" she repeats. "My cards—they are missing!"

The crowd erupts with interested babble, every patron looking at his neighbor with wide, curious eyes. Ken waddles to Santana's table and snatches the sack out of her hand, checking its emptiness for himself. His little piggy eyes narrow, and he checks under the table, as if the deck could have simply fallen into the grass without Santana noticing it.

"What did you do?" he accuses, fixing Santana with a furious glare.

"I didn't do anything!" Santana lies, trying her best to act scandalized and frightened concerning this new and unexpected turn of events. She widens her eyes and pats at the tablecloth, as if the cards could have crept under it like a mouse hiding under a blanket.

"Where are they?" Ken bellows.

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"Did you leave them back in your tent?" he asks, moving closer to Santana from over the table, speaking through clenched teeth.

"They were in the sack before!" she says frantically. "Someone must have stolen them!"

At Santana's word, the crowd brims over, its excited whispers changing into excited whoops and hollering. The prospect of theft seems much more intriguing than fortunetelling ever could. The people stand on their tiptoes and gawk at Santana, Ken, and the empty sack that should hold the cards. It amazes Santana how quickly their attention seems to shift. It amazes her even more when they begin to tell her lie better than she ever could, with gossip circulating through the crowd like fire wending through dried grass.

"—I saw a shifty looking fellow hanging around the gazebo —"

"—he ran off down the midway—"

"—should have known there was something afoot, by the way he looked—"

"—a foreign feller—"

"—her spurned lover, back to steal her livelihood—"

Ken looks between Santana and the crowd, gauging the severity of the situation. He seems pleased with the crowd's interest in Santana but nervous about the prospect of what the purloined cards might do for Santana's business. He gives the beaded sack one last half-hearted squeeze and shoots Santana a warning look.

"She'll still read palms!" he shouts over the gossip. "Her renown as a diviner of palms stretches all over the Old Country! Come see her look into your future, even without the cards!"

(Santana lets out the secret breath she was holding.)

* * *

><p>Santana has never experienced such a pleasant fair. The news of her stolen cards spreads rapidly across the midway so that no one even asks her to read tarot. Her patrons seem to find her even more mysterious than usual now that they view her as the potential victim of a crime. They hang on her words, a wondering sort of fear and intrigue glinting in their eyes, drinking in her accent and her vague promises with fervent attention.<p>

The show bell rings.

_Brittany._

Just as quickly as Santana slipped into the character of Madame Rossetti, she emerges from it, becoming giddy Santana Lopez, the silly girl who wants nothing more than to find Brittany Pierce, the knife thrower's daughter.

A thrill builds deep inside her, one that swells and spills over, carrying her quickly from her booth around the curve of the big top to where she expects to discover Brittany in the backstage area. Her heart beats to the thrum of Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, and she feels so much and so intensely that she wonders that her chest doesn't simply burst open from trying to contain all of it. She wants so much to tell Brittany about her success on the midway and also so much wants Brittany herself that she can't help but grin for it, buzzing with happiness from crown to foot.

When she happens upon Brittany waiting for her at the center of the backstage, the feeling in her chest grows too big and too bright and too wonderful.

"Hey, darlin'," Brittany smiles, dressed in her show costume and looking surprisingly shy, one foot tucked daintily behind the other. "I heard you were a big hit at the fair." Her cheeks pink as if she's said something overbold.

And, suddenly, though Santana thought she had a thousand things to say to Brittany, she finds that she can say none of them at all. She just adores Brittany too much and words seem so small in the face of such a vast feeling. She bounds over to where Brittany stands and takes hold of Brittany's wrists.

Brittany grins at her. "You got an idea, darlin'?" she teases, and Santana nods, tugging Brittany along after her, back toward the dressing tents, moving quickly over the shaded grass, drunk on so much excitement that she can hardly abide it.

She leads Brittany into the alleyway between the men's and ladies' tents—into the selfsame alleyway where Brittany kissed her in St. James.

"Darlin'?" Brittany starts, perplexed.

But then Santana kisses her, still holding Brittany's wrists in her hands, her pulse beating so hard that she knows Brittany can feel it through her skin. At first, she kisses clumsily, her mouth catching more of Brittany's chin than Brittany's lip as she stands on her tiptoes and leans in, but then she nods and works her lips around Brittany's, taking in Brittany's wet-hot-soft-sweet. The kiss sends a perfect jolt through her whole body, and Brittany must feel it, too, because she lets out a little voiced gasp, like Santana surprised her in the best way possible.

Brittany holds her mouth just slightly opened and the kiss nudges her lips apart. She livens in response to Santana's touch and starts to kiss Santana back, exhaling shakily into Santana's mouth, like she had forgotten to breathe until now.

Santana slips her tongue into Brittany's mouth, running it along Brittany's wet velvet tongue, and the lit feeling from last night returns to her, flaring like the flame in a kerosene lamp's belled jar. Brittany seems to like the kiss and lets out a muffled sigh in response to it, sinking further into Santana until Santana forgets about almost everything else in the world but her.

They only pull away when they need to breathe.

"What was that for?" Brittany asks dopily, and Santana smiles.

(Because Brittany is absolutely perfect.)

"Thank you," Santana says, breathless, moving her hands from Brittany's wrists to Brittany's waist, wrapping Brittany in an embrace, so that their bodies run flush against each other.

(It's such a small thing to say when Santana means so many infinite things.)

Brittany must understand Santana's sentiment because she kisses Santana back, stealing Santana's bottom lip between her own two lips and nipping it.

"We have to go perform, darlin'," she says against Santana's mouth, probably more to remind herself than Santana.

"Sure thing," Santana says.

(The girls stay where they are until Ken bellows for them, his voice carrying all the way to the dressing tents from the backstage.)

* * *

><p>If Santana thought the knight sketch droll yesterday, she finds it even more so today, for now she has the pleasure of experiencing the sketch with Brittany. After Mrs. Schuester dresses them, Brittany stands clad in a royal blue veil and Santana in red. They caper into the big top together, linked pinky finger in pinky finger.<p>

Brittany holds a sprig of beardtongue—of the same shade of ghostly, purpling blue as a vein running under pale skin—and Santana a cluster of wild quinine, bursting like little white stars upon a country sky.

Rachel Berry sends Brittany and Santana a strange look as they enter the ring, almost as if she doesn't recognize them. Her eyes dart to their lips, then to their eyes, and Santana feels suddenly as if she must explain herself, though she doesn't know wherefore.

Santana holds tightly to Brittany's finger as they spin under the stage lights. The audience cheers for them in all their pretty colors, as their skirts fan around their legs. They dance until the black knights make a run for them and the whole of the big top gasps, alarmed. Santana doesn't notice Puck charging for her, clad in his black shift, until Brittany's eyes show her where to look, and then Santana screams and Brittany too, both of them dodging away.

Puck flashes his devilish smirk, pleased with their mock horror. He lifts his wooden sword high to the rafters, and Brittany grabs for Santana's hand with a full hold rather than only with her fingers. The girls' hands tangle up together, and the audience shrieks for them and they for the fun of it until the blue knights appear to repulse their foes.

Santana takes more amusement from watching Brittany watch the sword fight than from watching the sword fight itself, smiling every time Brittany bounces on the balls of her feet and laughing as Brittany makes the most comical expressions in response to this blow or that parry.

"Woo-hoo! Knock him down!" Brittany crows.

"Knock who down?" Santana asks, squeezing Brittany's hand in her own, their flowers twined between their tangled fingers.

"Anyone!" Brittany cheers, grinning and pumping her fist in the air.

(The tugging feeling in Santana's chest grows so strong that Santana gasps a little, surprised.)

The blue knights vanquish their foes one by one, and then the music changes. The black knights raise themselves from the floor and bow before their conquerors, and the crowd cheers so loudly for their act of surrender that Santana wonders if the tumult won't deafen her. She feels the sound as well as hears it, shouts buzzing through her sternum, applause beating at her back and temples, becoming part of her, thundering in her blood.

Brittany leaps at Santana's side, taking Santana up with her.

For the briefest instant, it feels like they could fly.

They laugh, circus lights catching at the whites of their eyes, illuminating the rounds of their cheeks and sparkling over Santana's bracelets. Santana feels her pulse thrum against Brittany's skin and shuts her eyes just as they reach the greatest height of their jump, trying to remember everything as if her mind were a photographer's camera and she could make an image of this moment there forever.

When the knights all line up together, blue and black, standing broad shoulder to broad shoulder, all bowing to the "fair maidens," Puck fixes Santana with his thirsty look from across the way, and she quails, unsure of what to do with it.

Luckily, Brittany saves her, tugging Santana by the hand over to Sam in his handsome blue shift. Both Brittany and Santana give their flowers to Sam, and he grins, dopey and canine, in thanks. Puck's mouth falls open in indignation, and Santana laughs and Brittany with her. The girls both go skipping away to join the parade file, laughing at their joke and at everything.

Santana feels so, so happy that she thinks that she could cry for it.

* * *

><p>The remainder of the matinee performance goes off seamlessly and without any excitement except for the usual circus sort. Santana dances particularly gracefully around Puck and Rachel during the gypsy act and then watches from the aperture at the back of the big top as Brittany mugs for the crowd while her father takes aim at the target behind her, outlining Brittany in knives without a single waver in his throws.<p>

After the show, Santana walks back to the residential side of camp with Puck and Rachel, trying not to smile too widely as Puck complains that she presented her favor to Sam instead of him.

"Well, Sam did best you in battle, Noah," Rachel says helpfully.

"But Brittany already gave him her favor!" Puck complains.

(Santana tries and fails to bite down her grin.)

"He bested you soundly," Rachel amends.

(Santana laughs so loudly that the patrons leaving the midway probably hear her all the way down the pitch.)

* * *

><p>Puck waits for Santana outside while she stashes her props and washes her face inside the tent. Once Santana emerges into the light, Puck meets her, taking her by the hand and kissing at her knuckles, as romantic as Mr. Hardy's Oak, except with less grace and more slaver.<p>

"Ken needs me and the boys to mend the zebra fences," he says, by way of apology. "I hate leaving you alone all the time."

"I'm not alone," Santana blurts, so adamant that she seems to startle Puck, who looks at her as if she's mad. Santana struggles to say what she means. "It's just—that is to say—I won't be alone. I can always go with Brittany. And I'm sure that Ma Jones or Mrs. Schuester will have work for us. We'll have somewhere to be," she falters.

Puck searches Santana, concern etched into his brow, as if he thinks Santana might be putting on a brave face for his sake. He seems grateful in a way that makes Santana squirm under his gaze.

(She isn't his wife, no matter what he thinks otherwise.)

(She plays at the thread ring around her finger, absentminded.)

"There's a good ladybird," Puck says, thumbing over Santana's elbow before he starts away down the tent row. "I'll meet you for the evening show," he promises. He tugs his hat down over his eyes and squints into the afternoon sunlight, giving Santana one last careful look over his shoulder before he disappears down a side alley.

Santana forgets Puck almost as soon as he goes and returns to thinking of Brittany instead.

(Santana can't remember what she used to think about before she met Brittany.)

(She must have felt lonesome then.)

* * *

><p>Santana wishes that she had arranged to meet Brittany somewhere after the show, for, as it is, she can't seem to find Brittany, no matter where she searches for her. After checking at the trisection of tents and along the billboard partition, Santana even dares to venture down Brittany's tent row, calling Brittany's name without regard as to whether Mr. Pierce might hear her doing it or not.<p>

After shouting for Brittany several times and receiving no reply, Santana waxes bold enough to press her ear to the Pierce's tent flap, checking to see if the Pierces are at home; when she hears nothing on the inside of the tent—only the camp sounds outside of it—she can't help but wonder to where the knife thrower and his daughter might have disappeared. She decides to explore the mess area, hopeful that she might find Brittany waiting for her there.

Brittany isn't there.

But Ma Jones is.

"Girl, either pick your slack jaw up off the ground and start working or else get your lazy behind out of my kitchen!" Ma says, noticing Santana standing at the peripheries of the mess pit, disappointed and confused to discover Brittany nowhere in sight. When Santana doesn't move right away, Ma furrows her brow, annoyed. "What do you think you're doing?" she asks, crossing her arms over her apron.

Santana stammers, "I was... uh... looking for Brittany."

Ma rolls her eyes, as if she both expected Santana's answer and disapproves of it. "Well Miss Brittany ain't here right now, so either you best start peeling these potatoes for supper"—she gestures to a lumpy burlap sack propped against a nearby table—"or you best get yourself out of here and stop taking up space that could be used for working."

(Santana feels surprised that Ma gives her the choice.)

(Santana can't help but notice that Ma sounds mild, like she did this morning.)

Briefly, Santana considers leaving the mess area while she has a chance, but then she considers that sometimes it's best to stay in one place when hoping to meet up with someone lost. Brittany has always had better luck finding her than she's had finding Brittany anyway.

"I'll peel potatoes, miss," Santana mumbles, and Ma nods at her, clearly pleased.

It isn't so bad, working in the kitchen—not when Ma Jones and her girls let Santana alone, giving her time to think and to wait for Brittany. Santana sits at one side of the mess table, they at the other, with neither of the two parties speaking to each other, though Ma Jones' girls chatter to one another and Ma as usual.

Santana skins her potatoes into an aluminum bucket, same as always, carefully rounding the knife over the earthy curves of the tuber, digging out the rooted eyes and carving the pale, brown bruises out from the plane of slick white.

(If Quinn Fabray were to interview Santana about her position at the circus, Santana could say fortuneteller, gypsy dancer, and professional vegetable peeler.)

Though Santana handles the knife with vigilance, the task at hand doesn't actually require much thought on her part, and she quickly and easily wanders away into daydreaming about Brittany.

Ever since the knight sketch ended, Santana has felt absolutely silly for Brittany, like she might never stop smiling because Brittany is her secret. She still can't believe that someone as perfectly delightful as Brittany would want to be her friend—and especially not such a dear friend, and one who devotes so much time to keeping her company.

The longer Santana thinks of Brittany, the more the big, bright, wonderful feeling in Santana's chest threatens to outgrow its space, to overrun its garden and spill out like zealous flowers reaching toward the sun.

_I looked on the singer fair,  
><em>_my heart was at her feet  
><em>_She sang of love, the old, old theme  
><em>_in accents low and sweet  
><em>_And then she sang a song  
><em>_that made the teardrops start  
><em>_She sang a song, a song of home,  
><em>_a song that reached my heart_

_Home, home, sweet, sweet home  
><em>_She sang the song of "Home, Sweet Home,"  
><em>_the song that reached my heart_

Santana doesn't realize that she sings until she bends to retrieve a stray potato peeling from the grass and rights herself from her stoop to find Ma Jones grinning at her from the other side of the table.

"Mr. Puckerman is one lucky fella," Ma says, suddenly looking much more interested in Santana than she ever has before. She wears the kind of smile that turns her whole face bright, the dimples deep in her cheeks, her pretty lips pursed like she keeps some delicious secret.

Santana startles, embarrassed that she started to sing aloud without realizing it. Papa always told Santana that she had a lovely voice, and so did the old gardener, but Santana knows that there exists a vast degree of difference between entertaining friends and family in the parlor at the bachelor cottage and singing like Rachel Berry or even Ma Jones do for the whole circus. She also feels confused as to what her singing has to do with Noah Puckerman, when he hasn't even heard her sing before.

"What makes Puck lucky?" Santana asks, her cheeks heating in the face of Ma's unrelenting smile.

Ma laughs like Santana asked a foolish question, and Ma's kitchen girls laugh as well, honing in on the conversation. Santana flushes even more deeply. "Because you got it so bad for him!" Ma crows, and her kitchen girls giggle loudly at Santana's expense.

"Got what?" Santana asks, feeling dreadfully uninformed.

Ma gives Santana a meaningful look, reveling in her superior knowledge over Santana. She grins and practically croons, "Girl, only a fool in love sings a song with a woodenheaded grin like that on her face! You're silly in love, and there's no use denying it! You're in love with your mister!"

_I'm in love with Brittany Pierce._

* * *

><p>The birdsongs seem to hang in the air. The quiet sibilance of the fire dies away. The blood in Santana's veins almost halts in its flow, and her heart itself skids to a sudden standstill, stopped in the race it has run all day. If the world turns on, Santana would hardly know it.<p>

Santana Lopez loves Brittany Pierce.

Suddenly, Santana has the answer to all the questions she never thought to ask herself, and she knows that she loves Brittany as surely as she knows her own name. It isn't the simple devotion of a friendship, but a storybook love like in Shakespeare and Malory—though somehow even deeper and better and realer than those loves, to the point where Santana can't even remember a time before she loved Brittany, though she and Brittany only met each other four days ago.

Except that Santana can't love Brittany.

Santana can't be in love with Brittany—not in the storybook way—because Brittany is a woman, just as Santana is.

Women don't fall in love with other women.

Just as surely as Santana's heart knows that it loves Brittany, her mind can't comprehend the fact that such is the case. Santana has never heard of any woman loving another woman beyond friendship, never read about it in any book, and never even imagined it on her most fevered nights. Women don't bring other women bouquets of flowers or give other women pretty rings.

(Except.)

Women don't go a-courting to other women.

Women don't marry each other in churches or anywhere else at all.

Santana must be the most foolhardy and malfunctioning woman in the history of the world to fall in love with another woman. She must be the only woman to ever find herself in such a predicament. Suddenly, Santana feels like Alice tumbling head over heels down the rabbit hole, bamboozled as to which way is up and sure that she might never reach solid ground again.

"Are you all right?"

Santana had forgotten that such a person as Ma Jones existed or that anyone other than herself and Brittany existed, actually. Ma Jones fixes her with a concerned expression, eyebrows drawn together and mouth hanging open just a bit. Ma's kitchen girls sit, worried into silence, at Ma's back.

"You look a little green," Ma says, searching over Santana's face.

"I don't feel well," Santana manages, though that isn't half the truth of it.

Ma's face turns as soft as Santana has ever seen it. "Well, you peeled enough potatoes. Why don't you take a rest before the show? Ken'll have something to say about it if he thinks I worked you into your sickbed before tonight's performance," she says, only thinly veiling her kindness behind a last bit of snap.

"Thank you," Santana mumbles, setting down her knife on the tabletop and standing, as machinated in her movements as Robert-Houdin's clockwork tricks.

She scarcely registers herself leaving the mess pit or stumbling her way back to her tent, so caught up in her thoughts that she can do little else but wrestle with them, her heart a knot inside her chest, her stomach flipped and flipped again.

Women don't love other women.

Santana has never felt so positively stupid about anything in her life. How could her heart betray her in such an extraordinary way? How could it betray Brittany, who has never shown Santana anything but the purest kindness?

Oh God.

_Brittany._

Santana had only just begun to imagine what her love for Brittany would mean for herself, but suddenly she wonders what it might mean for Brittany. If Brittany were to find out that Santana had stupidly fallen in love with her, what would she say? How might she react? The fact that Santana does love Brittany is the most unbelievable thing in the entire world. How would Brittany even know what to say about it? Santana's stomach clenches, and, for a second, she worries that she might be sick.

No sooner does the thought cross Santana's mind than does Santana turn a corner down an alleyway between two tents and see a flash of corn-silk blonde and tatty cobalt blue.

_Brittany._

Santana all but throws herself back out of the alleyway from which she just came, moving so quickly that she hardly leaves footprints in the grass. Her heart leaps into her throat and her pulse pounds like the great circus band drums upon her temples. The names of all her grandmother's saints scramble in her mind.

_San Isidro de La Guardia, El Santo Niño Labrador, Nuestra Señora el Abad, San Antonio de la Candelaria._

Santana doesn't breathe as she listens for Brittany's movements—for the shuffle of Brittany's feet on the grass or for the sound of her voice calling Santana _darlin'_.

(Santana feels a dull ache in her chest.)

Though she strains her ears to hear, Santana divines nothing except the manic beat of her own heart, her breathing—hurricane-hard—and the sounds of camp and summer wind. She can't linger for Brittany to find her, not when she has so much to explain that she could never explain, ever.

On a normal day at the circus, Santana can't manage to find Brittany anywhere, no matter how she searches for her, but today Santana has happened upon Brittany by accident at the one time when she would do anything to avoid Brittany entirely.

She has to run.

With her whole body on high alert, Santana starts to creep back the way she came, back toward the mess pit. Once she makes it halfway up her alley, she bolts, allowing her feet to carry her in a wide circle around the white city instead of through it. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, and her throat tightens from her shame, confusion, anger, and love for Brittany, which still blooms vast, bright, and deep within her chest, impossible to ignore, no matter how much Santana would to God and all her devils that she could smother it.

Brittany will hate her.

Brittany will hate Santana, just like everyone hates Santana in the end. Brittany will see that Santana does have a curse—the most foolish, impractical curse that has ever blighted any one soul—and Brittany will call Santana goddamned just like everyone else does.

Santana chokes out a sob just as she reaches her tent, throwing open the flaps and stumbling her way inside to the cot, where she flops down, spent.

Brittany was Santana's friend—Santana's best and first and only—and then Santana had to spoil everything by falling in love with her.

Santana aches inside, like the hollow of a scraped bone.

She can hardly breathe.

Her body rings like a bell, every part of her trembling, though she tries to still herself and set her jaw and hold her own hands. She lowers herself onto the cot as slowly as a new mother would her babe into a cradle and rolls onto her back, sweating through her shirt and swallowing and swallowing and swallowing to no avail, trying to dislodge the lump swollen in her throat.

"I'm in l—," she starts, but can't bring herself to say it, lest the words make it real, like one of Mr. Malory's fairy spells. She shuts her eyes, blocking out everything, trying to breathe.

She feels like a madwoman or someone lost at sea.

If Santana could only clear her mind, she could think of something to do for her situation, but, as it is, Santana can think in nothing but circles, with everything returning to the fact that she loves Brittany Pierce and that she can no more imagine not loving Brittany than she could imagine a world without rules. Santana longs to sleep, exhausted down to her bones. She wonders if she might slip away into dreaming if only she keeps her eyes tightly closed and focuses on smoothing out her uneven respiration.

_I'm in love with Brittany._

_I'm in love with Brittany._

_I'm in love with Brittany._

She plays at the thread ring on her finger, knowing that she ought to take it off and throw it away and forget that Brittany ever gave it to her because Brittany only meant it as a joke, no matter how serious it felt to Santana when it happened.

(No matter how much it feels like something else.)

For the briefest second, Santana wonders if maybe it isn't such a bad thing, loving Brittany, because nothing so happy could be bad, but then so wondering causes Santana's throat to tighten again as she remembers all those falling-and-suddenly-fallen-into-love moments with Brittany and hates herself for not realizing that her heart had chosen its course before she could even realize that it had.

"I'm in l—," she starts again, but the words stop on her lips, like so many of the unkissed kisses Santana had meant to give Brittany over the last few days.

A single choking sob breaks Santana's throat.

(She won't remember falling and suddenly being fallen-to-sleep.)

(She won't remember the dreaming when it comes.)

(She won't remember dreaming kisses for Brittany.)

* * *

><p>What seems like just a moment later, Puck sets a hand on Santana's shoulder.<p>

"It's a quarter after six o'clock, ladybird. Time to wake up," he says gently, rustling her out of bed.

(Santana remembers Brittany instantly and at once feels as sick and conflicted as she did before she went to sleep.)

In the next instant, Puck produces a canteen from some unseen place and draws it to Santana's lips, holding it as she drinks. He pouts his lip at her and furrows his brow, a broad, careful palm set on her thigh.

"How are you feeling, ladybird?" he asks softly. "Ma Jones said you took sick after the matinee. If you still ain't all right, I'll tell Ken you can't go on tonight, and I'll fight him if he tries to get you."

Santana has seldom heard anything so sweet and so stupid in her entire life.

She almost starts to cry for it and also for Puck, as she realizes for the first time that it's him she ought to love and not Brittany because he is as close a thing to a husband as she ever will get, and he's been nothing but kind—or as kind as a Puck can be—to her since the day her father died.

Why when she looks at him does she feel nothing?

"I'm fine," Santana chokes out, though she really isn't.

She lies mostly because she can't stand to stay in the tent alone with her thoughts.

She stretches out her hand to Puck, allowing him to guide her up from her bed.

Puck treats Santana with surpassing gentleness as he leads her from the tent, carrying her peacock-colored knapsack and her tambourine with him and steering her by the elbow in the same way that he did on the first day when she arrived at the circus—back before she had met Brittany Pierce and before any of this nonsense about falling in love had happened.

He sneaks concerned glances at Santana every time they turn a corner and half-shields her with his body when they enter the midway, making sure that none of the other performers jostle her on the way to her booth.

When they reach Santana's gazebo, Puck pulls out Santana's chair for her and coaxes her to take a seat, then stalks over to Ken, pressing in close and addressing him in a gruff, hard whisper. Ken's beady, black eyes widen at whatever Puck tells him, and he glances quickly between Puck and Santana.

Though Ken looks as if he has a mind to argue with Puck, he quickly swallows his fight when Puck leaves him with one final scathing word and a shake of his fist. A threat. Fear floods Ken's face like ink spilling out of a cracked fountain pen. His usual ruddy color blanches out, and he nods to Puck, who leaves him with a curt shake of the head.

Puck slings one last look to Santana at her table.

"If you need anything, you just holler, ladybird," he says, earnest.

Puck departs, and Ken takes up his post beside Santana's sign but doesn't say a word to her, even when the opening bell for the evening fair rings.

Santana's time on the midway passes in a haze. Luckily, with her cards still "missing," she doesn't have to read tarot to anyone, though both her reputation from St. James and her stellar performance from the morning fair attract a large crowd to her booth for palm readings.

She mumbles through each interaction with her patrons, promising absurdities and worse, stopping in the middle of her sentences and completely forgetting to put on even the barest sham of her grandmother's accent. She thinks that someone yells at her once, but she doesn't hear a word of the chastisement, if that's even what it is. When she looks into the crowd, she wonders if they can see it on her—that the mysterious Madame Rossetti loves the knife thrower's daughter—and quails.

* * *

><p>Santana presents an even poorer performance in the big top than she does on the midway.<p>

Just before the show bell gives the knights their cue to take the stage, Santana imagines Brittany finding her under the lights and feels her stomach heave. Not wanting to be sick in front of everyone, Santana scurries away from the backstage area to just beside the elephant pen, doubling over and clutching her stomach. Something jogs in her stomach, and her throat burns, but nothing comes up.

"Santana?"

It isn't Brittany because she didn't say _darlin'_.

(Santana's chest aches.)

Santana turns to find Rachel Berry standing behind her, already clad in a deep red veil and holding a lazy stalk of drooping wild columbine in her hand, as a little girl might hold her dolly to her breast upon a thunderstorm night. Rachel searches Santana with circus lonely-eyes and stretches out a hand toward her, as if to set it on Santana's shoulder, but then Rachel draws it back, thinking better of such boldness.

"Puck said you weren't feeling well," Rachel says in a small voice. "Should I call Mrs. Evans to take care of you? She's the best nurse in camp."

Santana feels as if she runs one pace behind the pack in a footrace. She stares at Rachel. "Did we miss the second show bell? What about the knights—?"

Rachel interrupts Santana: "If you aren't well, you don't have to go on." She takes a step closer to Santana across the grass, entering the shadow that the elephants' wooden palisades cast over the earth. She still wears a timid expression, like Santana is an injured animal who might bite her if she dares to draw too close.

"But what about Ken?" Santana counters, standing up to her full height and wiping her mouth, though she has no reason to do so. She feels dizzy from moving so quickly.

"He won't miss us for the knight sketch, at least. With the equestrienne coterie in the show, we have more maidens than knights anyway, so no one will miss us gypsy women, at least until our act," Rachel says kindly.

If Santana misses the gypsy act, Brittany will look for her after the show. Brittany will come to find her because Brittany is too caring and too generous and too concerned about how Santana feels. Santana has to go on so that Brittany won't fret about her, if only so as to avoid speaking to Brittany.

"I'll go on," Santana says firmly, overpowering Rachel when she tries to interrupt. "I'm fine!"

Rachel flinches when Santana snaps, fear replacing her concern in an instant.

"Well, we've already missed the knight sketch and grand processional," she mumbles, looking at anywhere but at Santana, the sadness in her countenance more acutely noticeable than it had been a second ago.

"Just call me when it's time for the gypsy act," Santana orders, and Rachel nods, obedient.

She spares Santana a last hurt look before she goes away.

For a long while, Santana stands in the shade of the empty elephant pen, relearning how to breathe and be. She leans against the palisades and tries to map the quickest escape route from the big top after the show in her mind. If she skips supper, maybe Brittany won't talk to her—maybe they can just always miss each other in passing from now on.

After all, sometimes the circus seems like the biggest, loneliest place in the world.

(The part of Santana that feels but doesn't speak still only just wants Brittany.)

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't know if minutes or hours pass before Rachel Berry calls her name, motioning her over to the big top from afar, but when Santana returns to herself and her faculties, she finds that the sky has changed to heart-blood red, shadows quickly overtaking the firmament. Bugs dot the air, and crickets sing sad songs from the weeds. Somewhere in the distance, Methuselah or one of his cows heaves up a mournful cry from the waiting wings of the big top.<p>

(Santana remembers Brittany moving like light and water, all ease and grace, helping to bathe the elephants.)

(Her heart aches, and she feels circus-lonely for the first time in days.)

Santana barely makes it to the big top entrance in time to join Puck and Rachel for the act. Puck gingerly offers Santana her tambourine just as Ken ushers them onto the stage through the tent flaps. All the while, Puck stares at Santana like the little boy who always awakens in him during his kindest moments.

Though Santana can tell that he might like to do it, Puck doesn't get the chance to ask her how she feels before they debut inside the big top to thunderous applause and fabulous windjammer music, halting at the center of the ring with their backs turned to the audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen, from the darkest regions of Europe, I present to you a trio of gypsies most skilled in the arts of pyrotechnic artistry! To them, the touch of flame feels as but a friendly caress! They feed upon fire and bathe themselves in brimstone! Don't be alarmed by what you are about to see. Our gypsies are fire-proof! Watch them tame the flames!"

The darkness lifts, and new music plays, mysterious and sinuous, wending as a serpent. Santana moves on her cue, spinning to face the bleachers with a flourish of her gypsy skirts and a shake of her tambourine, feeling immediately off-balance, like nothing in her quite sits right.

(Like she tries too hard to want one thing when really she wants something else.)

Santana's feet tangle beneath her, and her knee gives out, unstable at an instant. She doesn't have time to scream before fire passes before her face, so close that she can feel its flush and smell its hot, metallic kerosene scent in her nose and throat. A shock of red and angry yellow stains the air just beyond her eyes, and Santana falls through the heat trail, landing hard on her wrist and over the tambourine, which she still clutches in her grasp, as though it's important.

The crowd shrieks and Puck rushes to the buckets at the back of the ring, dousing his staff in a trice. He dashes to Santana's side before it even registers with her that she fell, his hands catching her up at the elbows, tugging Santana to her feet.

"You all right, ladybird?" he asks, solely concerned and not angry at all.

Santana wonders if she is all right.

Her hands and wrists ache, and her knee burns with a fresh scrape. Her insides wobble from the fall, but she doesn't feel singed anywhere. The fire didn't touch her. The image of the flame's red tail sears into her mind, and she hates it and herself for being so foolish.

(She hates because she fears.)

"Yeah," Santana says shakily, and even though the audience can't hear her small reply, they still cheer for seeing her upright—and particularly once she nods her head.

"Let's have some applause for our gypsies! She's all right!" Will encourages the crowd.

(Santana doesn't know that she is all right.)

* * *

><p>Santana curses herself for not knowing that she had fallen in love with Brittany and for not knowing how to fall out of love with Brittany, either.<p>

The truth is that some stubborn something in Santana doesn't want to fall out of love with Brittany and that's the worst part of it all: that Santana always wants everything too, too much, even and especially those things that she cannot or must not have.

For as much as Santana feels foolish for loving Brittany though it should be impossible for her to do such a thing, she also feels deeply and unfailingly attached to Brittany, too. The more Santana attempts to chide herself for comporting her heart so carelessly, the more the quiet rebel in her argues that it's hopeless, hopeless, hopeless, so why not just give in?

Really, how could anyone help but fall in love with Brittany when Brittany is better than the hero in any book and so beautiful and kind? Though Santana wishes she could perhaps say otherwise, she wouldn't want to trade her time with Brittany at the circus away, even if it meant she could escape this strange and impossible love.

(Santana can't remember who she used to be before she loved Brittany.)

(She must have felt lonesome then.)

However Santana would deny it, she still registers that persistent tugging at her heart that connects her to Brittany as if by some invisible string—which is perhaps why Santana finds herself stealing away to the aperture in the tent to watch for the knife throwing act, though she knows she absolutely ought not to do it, taking her usual spot at the back of the big top, cloaked in darkness, waiting to find Brittany, though she would do better to run.

"Thank you, thank you! Our Little Malibran, everyone! Now that we've had our music, how about a little danger? Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a frontiersman skilled in the art of knife throwing, whose precision goes unmatched in these fine United States! I give to you Mr. Daniel S. Pierce and his beautiful daughter, Brittany, straight from the heart of Appalachia to the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus!"

For Santana's desperation, Brittany looks even more beautiful tonight than perhaps she ever has before. Whereas normally Brittany's pretty flaxen hair hangs straight around her face, tonight it boasts a subtle wave, as if it were recently dampened and drying. It shines under the stage lights, illuminating Brittany's face. The faintest flush of sun heat lingers in Brittany's cheeks, and Brittany smiles her real smile to the crowd rather than only her performance smirk, true happiness putting a spark into her eyes that Santana can see even from so far away.

(How could anyone help but fall in love with Brittany Pierce, the most beautiful girl in the world?)

The tug in Santana's heart feels more like a galling ache. Santana wants so much without knowing exactly what it is she wants.

And then.

Brittany mugs to the crowd, performing her daintiest curtsy to them before turning to take her place at the target board—before turning toward the back of the tent and blowing a kiss to the darkness.

A kiss to Santana.

The sweetest ache plays through Santana's heart, violin-sad and a held out at a quaver. Brittany flashes Santana her most winning and golden smile—her real, true Brittany-smile—a rose flush pinking her cheeks as she rushes to take her place for the act.

Santana finds her own hand at her heart.

She gasps.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

* * *

><p>Santana only makes it through the final processional because Puck holds her up by the elbow with one hand while lazily swinging the spare fire flail with his other. Each time the flail draws close to Santana, she flinches, hating the flames as a priest would hate sin and wishing that she could be anywhere in the world but at the J.P. Adams &amp; Son Traveling Circus &amp; Menagerie, if only just for one night.<p>

After the show, Puck ushers Santana out-of-doors.

"Breathe," he commands her.

(She didn't realize that she had stopped again.)

Puck watches Santana with genuine concern, and she wonders if he isn't truly seeing her for the first time. He smoothes a lock of hair back from her face and sets one of his broad, flat palms against the back of her head, drawing her close to him so that she rests against his chest, close enough that she can smell the musk of his sweat and feel his heat all over her skin. He presses a kiss into her hair.

"Just breathe, ladybird," he says. "Tomorrow, I'll have Mrs. Evans look after you while we put on the show. We'll get you feeling better in no time—"

"I'm not sick," Santana says loudly enough to stop Puck from speaking. His hand stills against her hair, but he doesn't say anything. "I'm just tired," Santana explains. "And I want to go back to the tent."

"All right," Puck answers stupidly. "I can take you back to the tent and you can go straight to bed, or I could bring your supper to you—"

Santana doesn't think Puck understands.

"No," she says firmly. "I want to go back to the tent with you."

* * *

><p>Girls don't fall in love with girls, but it's okay to like what you like.<p>

The paradox plays over and over again in Santana's head, like she song that just won't leave her, though the band ceased to play it hours ago. She leads Puck through the grass by the hand, the new darkness of the night encroaching on them from every side. They pass by the shadows of other performers but thankfully not Brittany. Santana feels a searing burn where Puck's skin touches her own.

Santana fell in love with another girl, and she can't like what she doesn't like.

But still.

She needs to fall in love with Puck as quickly and as easily as she fell in love with Brittany. If the house in her heart takes up a new owner, then she can breathe and learn to be again and not have to worry about Brittany hating her. If Santana falls out of love with Brittany, then she and Brittany can remain friends. If Santana learns to love the man who purports himself her husband, then everything will be simpler, everything will be right.

Puck is the boy who saved Santana from the streets, who made certain that her father's lawyers hadn't the opportunity to evict her from the bachelor cottage before she had someplace else to stay. Puck arranged for all her travel, for her new job and new life and new name—for his name to become her name. Puck is the boy who wants to journey with Santana to Paris and who shows her kindness, though it's foreign to him to mind anyone except himself.

He's the boy who loves the circus and Mr. Adams more than he can say.

He's the little boy with the idiot smile, stupid-looking in his floppy black hat and gypsy duds.

He saved her life.

Santana ought to love him because Puck is the person it should be easy for her to love.

(But she doesn't.)

When they reach their tent, Santana rustles the flaps apart and yanks Puck inside with her, pushing him deep into the most colorless dark and not bothering to close the tent flaps after her. She shoves Puck down onto the cot by his shoulders, eliciting a surprised grunt from him for her force. Though Santana fusses at Puck more than she does at anyone else in the world, she has seldom treated him so roughly.

"Ladybird?"

If Santana fell in love with Brittany by kissing her, she can fall in love with Puck by kissing him, as well. All the storybooks talk about it. All the storybooks talk about how wonderful it should be.

Santana sets her hands flat against Puck's chest, feeling the swell of his breathing, and pushes him back farther onto the cot until he sits at the sling of it. Without a word, Santana clambers atop Puck, sitting in his lap, facing him, her hands taking hold at his gypsy vest. She smells the sour and dirt and peppery sweat on him.

He opens his mouth to speak again, but Santana doesn't wait before she crashes her mouth against his so hard that their teeth clack together and a jolt of pain runs through Santana's jaw. Puck makes a muffled whimpering noise in response, but Santana quiets him, slipping her tongue into his mouth, where she tastes nothing like Brittany's sweetness—only stale, herbal chaw and heat.

(Santana's body feels library-silent and closed-off as she presses closer, closer, closer.)

Though Puck soon livens to Santana's kiss and begins to kiss her back, his wet mouth working against hers, his tongue storming her mouth, and his hands sliding up to hold Santana at the hips, keeping her flush against him, Santana feels none of that stoked Brittany-feeling in her belly or anywhere. Santana works to ignite it, kissing Puck even more fiercely, focusing on the sensation of his tongue against hers and his small, delighted noises upon her lips, but no matter how she struggles at it, she can't seem to strike her fire into being.

(She closes her eyes more tightly.)

(She hadn't realized she had closed them at all.)

"Ladybird," Puck says in a low, lupine growl.

And then.

She feels pressure and heat against the inside of her thigh, not from her, but from him—a brush of solid warmth through fabric. Puck's hips jockey up to meet hers where she straddles him, and the solid warmth moves with him, poking at her leg.

Santana stops.

At first, Puck doesn't seem to notice her reaction. He continues to slather kisses onto her lips and against her jaw, running the wet of his lip along her cheek and guiding her waist down to meet his while he pants out the word ladybird in staccato, his voice a growl in his throat. He starts to guide Santana down onto the cot, laying her out like a sleeping princess below him, but he halts mid-motion when his knuckles brush over her cheek.

"Ladybird, are you crying? Jesus! You're trembling."

Santana hadn't noticed she was until Puck said so.

Puck lifts his finger to Santana's face and brushes away a tear from it. She can't see him with her eyes cinched so tightly shut, but she feels something in him die down at once.

"Please don't cry, ladybird," he entreats, suddenly the little boy that Santana likes so well.

"I'm sorry," Santana sobs, and she means more than she could ever say—more things than she has words to explain. A tremor passes over her, and she lies back onto the cot, wrapping her arms around herself just to keep the thing in her chest from unraveling. Her legs form a clumsy knot over Puck's lap.

She just wants Brittany.

"I'll get you a drink of water, ladybird. How about that?" Puck says, a note of helplessness in his voice. He shifts out from under Santana without waiting for her answer. "I'll be right back," he says soothingly, and Santana opens her eyes a peek as he rises from the cot, sliding her legs over to take his place.

She watches Puck through the blear of her tears, seeing him silhouetted against a backdrop of Castor and Cancer through the opening of the tent. He crouches even more than he usually would under the tent frame and keeps his back to her.

"Just give me a minute," he says in a funny pinched voice, and Santana closes her eyes again, still shaken to her bones.

The last thing Santana will remember is the swish of canvas flaps closing after Puck a while later as he emerges from their tent and then the deep tremble than runs through her whole body, from her toes to her teeth. She muffles down an aching cry and holds herself more tightly, feeling cold even for the warm night.

(When Puck returns with his promised water, he finds Santana sound asleep.)

(And dreaming.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I dedicate this chapter to my dear friend the Good Reverend, whose Jazzverse delights me so, so much.<strong>

**Other Author's Note: Also, I would like to offer a special thanks to the lovely and talented virginiaburton on tumblr for producing such fine art to accompany the story. I'm in love with her tarot series, not gonna lie.**

**And, finally, I know I say this every chapter, but it is especially true here: I could not have written this chapter without the help of my amazingly talented and patient beta Han at socallmedaisy on tumblr, whose good judgment, keen eyes, and thoughtfulness are crucial to my writing process with this story. #brotp: head protection**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**"Soy una actriz" : "I am an actress"**_

_**San Isidro de La Guardia, El Santo Niño Labrador, Nuestra Señora el Abad, San Antonio de la Candelaria : **_**The names of various Spanish and Latin American Catholic saints scrambled and with mismatched epithets**


	8. All That and a Slice of Pie

**Chapter 7: All That and a Slice of Pie**

**Friday, July 1st, 1898: Onawa, Iowa**

Santana won't remember her dreams, but she will still feel the impression of them, knotted and fevered, long after she awakens, like a sickness out of Mr. Livingstone's Africa. She opens her eyes to darkness, her hair plastered to her brow and whole body furnace-warm, despite the nip in the morning air. She immediately discovers herself not alone, and her heartbeat kick starts.

Puck shares the cot with her.

He holds Santana as she lies atop him, their bodies flush together, his arm fastened around her waist like a belt and his scruffy cheek pressed to her ear so that she can hear his breath and feel it against her skin, too.

"Ladybird?" Puck mumbles groggily.

She stiffens in his arms.

The events of yesterday return to Santana as if they had never left her.

She remembers spending the morning reading a silly story to Brittany amidst grass and wildflowers and then peeling carrots with Ma Jones at the mess pit.

She also remembers realizing for the first time that all the hopeful, pressing admiration that she feels for Brittany really means something else—that same something else that has lingered unsaid at the tip of her tongue for days now, ever since she joined the circus and first met Brittany at the trisection of tents, feeling so, so lonely.

She remembers her deep shame and fear and how she hid from Brittany the whole evening following her revelation. She remembers botching the night performance, a streak of flames searing the air just in front of her face. She remembers dragging Puck to the tent with her and pressing sloppy, heartbroken kisses to his lips and neck.

She remembers thinking about Brittany the whole time.

"Oh God," she says aloud, her voice coming out strangled, even in a whisper.

"Don't worry, ladybird," Puck says, adjusting his grip on her to hold her closer. "Nothing happened last night. You just came back from the circus talking and acting like anyone but yourself and gave me some smooches. When I went to get you a drink of water, I got back to the tent to find you all tuckered out. You kept shivering and I didn't have a blanket to set on you, so I decided to just keep you warm myself. I was a gentleman, I promise."

Santana knows that Puck gambles, scraps, chews quid, and tells as many lies as anyone at the circus—which is to say an awful lot of lies—but she also knows that, despite his rough edges, Puck is a decent fellow and that he swore on her father's grave that he would care for her, no matter what. Santana believes Puck when he says he didn't touch her except to hold her through the night. She feels a sweetness in her chest.

(There's the boy that she should love.)

"I'm sorry," Santana says suddenly.

"For what?" Puck asks, and she feels his expression change against her cheek, suddenly quizzical.

"I'm sorry for acting like a madwoman last night," she says. "I didn't mean to—I mean, I shouldn't have—," she stammers.

Puck squeezes Santana in his arms, stopping her as she speaks. He presses a quick kiss to her jaw line. "Hey, it's all right, ladybird," he says softly. "A lot of girls get jitters when they ain't never been with a man before"—Santana squirms in Puck's arms—"But, hey, listen. It's all only natural, ladybird, and I promise that when you're ready, I'll be gentle, all right? I don't ever want to hurt you." He kisses her jaw again, fervent.

(His promise sounds like a prayer.)

(Santana can never believe in angels, only devils.)

Something shivers inside Santana, restless, and she thinks, without meaning to do it, of Brittany, who is the most naturally gentle person she knows and who would never hurt her under any circumstances. Santana tries to press the thought out of her mind as one would a wrinkle from a freshly laundered shirt, but the harder she tries not to think of Brittany, the more she can't help but do so.

Soon, Santana can almost feel the whisper-pad of Brittany's fingertips across her face, as placid as flower petals lilting onto the surface of a puddle from an overhanging branch. She thinks of the Jacob's Ladder and beardtongue Brittany braided into a garland and set, secret-soft, upon her brow like a queen's diadem yesterday. A sob rises in her chest but doesn't pass her lips; it aches inside her like a wound.

(Santana hadn't expected to awaken both heartbroken and still loving Brittany all the same.)

(In a fairer world, one would never feel both heartbroken and in love at the same time.)

_Lo más pronto que te olvides de la justícia, lo más felíz serás._

If Puck feels Santana shudder against him, he kindly doesn't mention it. Instead, he simply holds Santana close and inhales against her hair, taking in some hint to keep it with him throughout the day. Santana knows that's all she can give Puck of herself—just the barest breath of her in his lungs—because everything else she has in her to give already belongs to Brittany. Santana doesn't remember giving Brittany so much of herself or really giving Brittany anything at all, but now that Santana thinks on it, she knows for certain that her heart, hope, and goodwill aren't her own anymore.

They belong to the knife thrower's daughter.

Santana tries to remember when exactly she fell in love with Brittany Pierce and wonders if it wasn't when they played dress-up taking inventory in St. James or at their first kiss atop the trapeze ladder under the big top in Mankato or even when Brittany appeared to Santana at the trisection of tents that Sunday morning in Worthington, but the more Santana thinks on the matter, the more confused she becomes.

Santana can't ever remember falling in love with Brittany.

(It seems so much like an all-along-sort-of-everyday-everything.)

And since Santana can't remember how she fell in love with Brittany, she can't think of how to fall out of love with Brittany, either.

If Santana thought that Puck could tell her the first thing about love, she might ask him for his advice concerning her predicament, for she can't very well ask Sam—who no better knows the answer to Santana's question than does Santana herself—or Brittany—who has probably never needed to fall out of love with anyone, having never fallen into it by mistake as has Santana.

Briefly, Santana considers simply telling Brittany the truth and begging Brittany's forgiveness while she attempts to sort herself out. After all, perhaps if Santana were to stop loving Brittany in the storybook way, she could find it in herself to love Brittany only as a friend, and so still spend time with Brittany all the while.

Santana tries to imagine the situation reversed—which is to say that she tries to imagine how she might react if Brittany were the one in love and not herself and if Brittany confessed as much to her in a fit of desperation—but she quickly finds that her imagination fails her, for she can only envisage herself throwing her arms around Brittany's neck the moment Brittany revealed her secret and peppering Brittany's face with kisses, overjoyed, because she loves Brittany so, so much, and she feels so happy to know that Brittany loves her in return.

And that's just the problem, isn't it?

It wouldn't be so terrible for Santana to love Brittany if Brittany loved Santana back.

But Brittany has only showed Santana a usual sort of friendly kindness, though Santana's heart, in its naïveté, has somehow mistaken it for romance. Girls don't love other girls in the storybook way; no one has ever written novels about such things, neither spoken about them, nor acted them out in plays on the stage, nor dreamed of them, even in the darkest, strangest fevered nights. Santana's heart has somehow erred, creating something new and impossible because Santana had never taught it any better.

Brittany's heart knows better, though. Brittany can't love another girl like Santana can, and, even if Brittany could love another girl, it wouldn't be Santana anyway.

(Lucky things don't love bad omens.)

Brittany Pierce doesn't love Santana Lopez, no matter how much Santana Lopez loves her.

"Let's get you some breakfast, ladybird," Puck says gently, rustling Santana off his shoulder and onto the cot, extricating himself from beneath her. "You'll feel better once you've had some of Ma's eggs and coffee. We'll get you through the day," he promises.

Santana wishes that she could believe him.

(She wishes she could believe in just one good thing.)

* * *

><p>Santana washes her face in the steel basin for far longer than she ought to do, scrubbing and scrubbing with the blunts of her fingernails until she rubs her cheeks raw and her lips sting under her own touch.<p>

She waits for Puck to wash, as well, and then offers him her wrist so he can lead her outside. He ferries Santana along behind him as gently as he can, parting the tent flaps with one hand and gesturing her into the open air with the other. Santana allows Puck to shepherd her from the black indoors to the starlit outdoors. She feels the wet on her cheeks dry and wishes that Puck's kindness could catch her up as easily as Brittany's always has.

As Puck deconstructs their tent, Santana finds Castor and Cancer waiting for her in the Iowa sky, but also a host of constellations in miniature appearing and then fading out in clusters all along the grass; fireflies play amidst the drooping, white weed heads. Despite how she knows she oughtn't to do it, Santana thinks of cheek kisses and of so many other things.

(A pang.)

Though Santana dreads meeting Brittany at breakfast, neither the knife thrower nor his daughter make an appearance in the mess pit for their first meal. Santana and Puck sit beside Finn, Blaine, and the sweet-faced juggler boy, whom Finn calls Kurt, munching quietly on their usual fare, and Santana hunkers over her plate, hardly tasting anything and chewing far less thoroughly than she ought to do, feeling sicker and sicker by the second.

The circus takes the backstreets out of town, passing behind the firehouse rather than at its front door, squeezing down some narrow thoroughfares on its way to the train depot. Santana clings to the side of a wagon, Puck's arm at her waist, holding her to her spot, and sets her jaw against the day.

Bugs whine obnoxiously around her ears and the wagon wheels bump over the uneven pavement. She tries to think of maybe one bad thing about Brittany, reasoning that perhaps she could convince her heart to not love Brittany if she were to discern some flaw in Brittany's character, but even after a thorough examination of Brittany in her mind, she finds nothing to dislike about Brittany at all—not even the secrets that Brittany still has yet to tell her.

(How can Santana help but love the girl who keeps all of her promises?)

For once, Santana feels relief after scanning the circus crowd at the depot and failing to find Brittany anywhere amongst it. Santana slumps up onto a boxcar, Puck doing most of the work to drag her along by her leather belt, and nearly collapses against the wall from exhaustion, already bone-tired, earliness of the day notwithstanding. Somehow it seems like she hardly even slept last night at all.

Santana only barely registers Rachel Berry crawling into the cabin beside Puck and wishes she didn't register it when Rachel clears her voice to speak.

"I heard you singing in the mess pit yesterday when I went to draw some water from the barrels," Rachel announces, as pleased with herself as if she were Mr. Magellan and she had just discovered her strait for the first time. "You have quite a passable voice, Santana. I would have said something to you at the moment I heard you sing, except I didn't want to, um... disturb Ma Jones from her work. Though you're far too old to begin professional training, you could benefit from some lessons and perhaps actually develop some technique. I would be more than obliged to offer my help to a fellow gypsy, and I think I could improve you quite a bit, though obviously not to my level of talent, the adroitness of my teaching notwithstanding, and—"

"No, thank you," Santana says gruffly, rubbing the bridge of her nose between her two fingers as she feels the beginnings of a headache coming on.

"Really, it would be no trouble," Rachel prattles. "Your modest contralto falls well within my range, and it would scarcely challenge me to teach you some method. Let's see, what were you singing yesterday? 'The Song That Reached My Heart,' was it?" Rachel clears her throat and hums a note before she begins to sing.

_That night I shall never forget,  
><em>_that night with its pleasure and pain  
><em>_I think of the singer, I think of the song—_

Her loud, babbling voice fills the train cabin, reverberating off the wooden walls and occupying every corner. Santana can't take it, not the sound, not the song, not what the song brings into her mind.

(Her heart.)

"I don't want singing lessons!" she shouts, voice cutting through Rachel's like a sword strike.

Everyone in the boxcar starts, and Puck's eyes widen so much that he looks gobsmacked. He mutters a crude word, but Santana ignores him, already too riled to quit speaking now.

_"¿Alguna vez eschuchas? ¡No me hables, bocona!_ For the love of God, do you never shut up? Has it ever occurred to you that some people don't want to listen to you spout off all the time like you wrote the book on the circus? I said no thank you! I don't care about singing! I don't want to sing, and I don't want you to sing, and I just want you to shut your obscenely wide mouth before someone mistakes it for a tunnel and drives a stagecoach clean through it!"

It's the wrong thing to say for so many reasons.

Rachel Berry's mouth opens in a piteous _o_, but though her sad, brown eyes well with tears, she doesn't shed a one of them.

(Really, it's Santana who feels like she ought to cry.)

In the next instant, Rachel closes and opens and closes her mouth like a fish on a line, looking between Puck and Santana like she can't believe Puck would allow his wife to say such cruel things to her and like she can't believe that Santana, as Puck's wife and a fellow gypsy, could even invent such cruel things to say. She wears a deeply wounded look, like a doe already mostly felled by a hunter.

"Ladybird!" Puck scolds Santana, but it's too late.

"I just thought—," Rachel stammers, her lip all aquiver.

Santana balls her fists and closes her eyes.

"I don't want to sing," she mumbles because that, at least, is the truth.

She leans back against the boxcar wall, only just resisting the urge to bang her head up against it, willing Rachel and Puck to disappear. When she hears the rustle of skirts and the awkward, shuffling percussion of feet against floorboards with the train in motion, she knows that half her wish came true.

"That wasn't very kind of you, ladybird," Puck says in a flat voice, but he doesn't move or admonish Santana any further.

Santana grits her teeth.

_(And then she sang a song that made the teardrops start. She sang a song, a song of home, a song that reached my heart.)_

* * *

><p>After a long minute, the silence starts to prick at Santana's conscience, or at least her ego. Vaguely, Santana wonders who amongst the company she may have offended, yelling at Rachel Berry with so little provocation. She chances a peek at the other riders in the boxcar and finds their population far more numerous than she had expected.<p>

Nearly one half-dozen of Ma's kitchen girls occupy the car, plus another half-dozen supes, Puck, Finn, Rachel Berry and her father with their quadroon manservant, and Kurt the juggler. All of them gape at Santana like she's one of Mr. Goethe's devils, suddenly appeared on their otherwise calm stage. Rachel huddles in the corner, pressing her face into the quadroon's shirt, tearless but clearly shaken as her manservant strokes her hair and glares at Santana on Rachel's behalf.

Of course, Santana didn't intend to treat Rachel cruelly, and she certainly never wished to upset Rachel so, but the circus folks in the car seem to believe that Santana had it in for poor Rachel from the start. They stare at Santana as a destitute man would a tax collector come to take his farm. They hate her for Rachel's sake and also for their own reasons.

_Gilly._

_Devil._

_Nigger gypsy._

It had been too long since Santana had offended the circus.

If she could, Santana would explain herself, but, really, what would she say? She hardly yelled at Rachel for Rachel's sake, neither even for Brittany's. Mostly, she yelled for herself.

(Santana hates herself more than the circus could ever hate her anyway.)

Whenever Santana had offended the company before, she would retreat and hide amidst shadows until Brittany arrived to kiss some hope back into her, but today Santana can hardly retreat from a boxcar and can't rely on Brittany to play her panacea any more than she can rely on herself to do so. She buries her face in her arms and turns a sharp shoulder to the company, clenching her jaw so as not to cry, willing the jittery feeling inside her to harden like dried cement.

Let them hate her if they will.

Let them hate, let them hate, let them hate because what does it matter at all?

A draft shudders through the boxcar, and Santana curls her toes underneath her skirt, but then immediately regrets doing it.

(Everything at the circus reminds her of Brittany somehow.)

She hugs herself more tightly to keep her ribs from quaking. Her face feels hot, but the rest of her shivers. She steels herself against tears. It would be foolish to cry over something as silly offending the circus. She won't do it. She won't cry over something as silly as falling in love by mistake.

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't know how long it takes for the train to reach its destination; the rail ride seems both hours long and minutes short at once. When the boxcar finally halts on its tracks, Santana refrains from looking up and keeps her head hidden against her arms until Puck finally nudges her back into being.<p>

"Come on, ladybird," he says tersely, offering his hand to help her onto the platform.

The train depot is a long, brown building with a gabled roof and signal poles sticking up from its corners. A sign overhanging the front end of the train station proper reads ONAWA in whitewash letters, alerting Santana to the name of the town, though not to what state of the Union claims it.

The land around the depot boasts a series of low bluffs and what Santana first mistakes for a river but later recognizes as a narrow, horseshoe-shaped lake in the distance. The foliage is green but carries a grayed tinge to it. Low cloud cover prevents Santana from discerning whether the sky sprawls Iowa-low or soars Minnesota-high.

Puck wraps an arm around Santana's waist, leading her down the platform toward the wagons. He seems to have forgiven her already for her meanness to Rachel on the train—or at least excused her for it on account of her not feeling well. Puck is always so quick to forget Santana's faults, and that really ought to mean something to her when it comes to him, but it doesn't.

When some of the kitchen girls from the boxcar start to whisper to each other as Santana passes by them, Puck glowers at them from under the brim of his hat and tugs Santana closer to him, indignant. He breathes in another keepsake breath of Santana like he did in the tent this morning, his lips hovering over the crown of her head in an ungiven kiss.

(Santana wishes that she could feel grateful to Puck, even just a little bit.)

Santana and Puck board a mule-pulled wagon together, along with Blaine the trilby tramp and the Flying Dragon Changs, none of whom witnessed Santana's outburst on the train, but all of whom stare at Santana with hangdog brown eyes, as if they can see something tragic lingering just over Santana's shoulder, like one of Mr. Henry James' specters in the mist.

Santana focuses on anything but the other circus folk and their interested-sad eyes. Instead, she watches the fields that border the depot as the circus processional trundles past them, set against revealing anything to her fellow riders that she doesn't know for certain yet herself.

"I bet the old bull elephant could clear out one of these cornfields in under an hour, if he were hungry," Blaine muses, pinching the brim of his trilby hat between two fingers so that the wind doesn't steal it away from him.

Santana doesn't know if he means to engage her in conversation or Puck, so she feels grateful when Puck answers, sparing her from speaking.

"Elephants don't eat corn, idiot," Puck says meanly, and Blaine shies a little.

The image of Brittany feeding Methuselah tufts of wild chamomile yesterday during his bath fills Santana's mind. She remembers Brittany offering Methuselah hay at his pen on the day when she and Santana played hooky from their chores and kissed for the first time under the big top. The truth is that Santana misses Brittany, even though it's been less than a day since last they spoke to each other. Will she always miss Brittany from now on?

(A pang, a pang, a pang.)

* * *

><p>If the circus makes a marvelous debut in Onawa, Santana doesn't notice it. She hardly pays attention to the streets or to the people or to any of the circus performers, and instead clings to the wagon as if it is her life preserver on a tossing sea.<p>

As the circus caravan makes its way through town, drawing ever closer to its final destination for the day, Santana feels a low, persistent dread rising in her chest.

Santana can't avoid Brittany forever—partly because Brittany always seems to find her, no matter how Santana might hide and partly because she still longs to see Brittany, as if she doesn't know how to long for anything else but that.

Brittany reads Santana fluently, so well that she'll know right away that something has changed in Santana's demeanor when next they meet. Even if Santana could manage to keep her love for Brittany a secret in word, she could hardly keep from revealing it in action; her desperate glances and strange manner would reveal her upset to Brittany in an instant, and Brittany would ask about it, concerned for Santana in her maddeningly perfect way.

And if Brittany were to ask it, Santana could no more lie to Brittany than she could cheat the cards; Santana would betray herself at once and confess everything in a single breath.

And then what?

Though she can do so well, Santana can hardly bear to imagine the confusion written upon Brittany's furrowed brow, the concern in Brittany's eyes changing suddenly to shock and then to fear—fear for the thing Brittany doesn't understand and that Santana doesn't understand herself.

Isn't that what Brittany said, that people fear what they don't know?

Santana can't stand to think what might come after Brittany's fear and tries to shake the image of it from her mind, swearing it to herself that she will avoid Brittany until she can find a way to rewrite her storybook love for Brittany into something new—until she can quiet it back down to friendship, an understandable thing.

She just feels so entirely foolish.

Foolish and lonely.

There isn't any girl in the world who's ever fallen in love with her best friend, as has Santana, and it's a strange and lonely thing to realize as much.

Santana knows why it happened, of course.

In those lonely days between Abuela's death and Papa's, Santana spent her time cooped up in the bachelor cottage, hardly using her voice at all, with no one to keep her company at chores, except sometimes for Puck, who would smile his idiot smile at Santana through the windows while he washed them or as he trimmed the roses and Sweet Williams in the garden, grinning at Santana as she read her books, seeing her without comprehending her at all, always through a pane of glass and from some ways away.

On rare occasions, Santana would invite Puck inside the bachelor cottage and offer him lemonade or tea rolls just to have someone with whom she could make conversation until Papa arrived home in the evenings. It wasn't that Santana wanted to talk to Puck, in particular—just that she wanted someone around.

But even inviting Puck inside didn't cure Santana's loneliness.

Puck could talk to Santana for hours without ever saying anything to her. He could watch her read every book from the Grolier Club shelves and never see her once, no matter where she sat in the latticework light of late afternoon around the house.

Puck never knocked on the door for her and he never found her, though she hid in plain sight.

Even Papa never did.

Santana always just wanted someone to find her.

(Brittany always does.)

For so many months, Santana longed to feel anything but lonely, and the thing is that she hasn't felt that—hasn't felt lonely—since the circus stopped in Worthington and she sat down to sew riding habits at the trisection of tents.

Brittany fills every empty corner in Santana's bachelor cottage heart. Her voice speaks to Santana and then pauses to listen when Santana speaks to her in return. She sees Santana no matter where Santana hides, no matter how the light looks around Santana during the sprawling hours of the day or the darkness wears on her at night. Brittany learns Santana's secrets just as easily and readily as Santana learns the stories contained within new books.

And since Santana knows Brittany now, Santana can't go back to loneliness, she can't go back to not knowing Brittany, who saved her not just from the special brand of circus solitude but from years of quiet back in New York, even before Abuela died and left Santana there alone.

If Santana told Brittany she loved her, Brittany might never talk to Santana again and that's something that Santana could not abide. Santana wants Brittany in her life, even if they can only ever be friends.

Santana would rather be only a friend to Brittany than nothing to Brittany at all, which is why Santana must divine some way to keep Brittany from realizing just how much she loves her and must somehow do it by tonight, before Brittany can perceive the change in their companionship.

_Oh Diablo que me sigues, ¡ayúdeme ahora!_

The wagon jolts over a bump in the road, and Santana starts, thrown from her thoughts.

For the first time, she becomes aware of the ocean rumble of the crowds and the swirl of circus colors dancing on every side of her, like swimming schools of fish in a tide. She takes in her surroundings: a main street so wide that it could likely fit three or four boxcars across it longwise, sidewalks lined with pretty, painted buildings and pretty smiling people, all happy to see the parade, despite the early hour.

And Brittany.

Santana can't be certain if their eyes meet from across the road or if Brittany even sees her, but Santana catches a flash of tatty, cornflower blue and the golden sheen of Brittany's hair in sunlight, and her heart leaps to her throat. Without thinking, Santana nestles deeper into Puck's side, burrowing there and hiding her face like a baby bird at its mother's wing.

"You okay?" Puck mutters, paying half his attention to Santana, half his attention to waving at the citizens of Onawa cheering for the circus as it makes its way down the road.

Santana doesn't answer him because she doesn't know.

* * *

><p>When the wagon trundles into camp—only partially made up and as misty as a Union graveyard—Santana fully intends to proceed directly from the roundup area to her and Puck's tent, never mind her morning chores, as long as she can avoid Brittany.<p>

Unfortunately, she doesn't have the chance to do so.

Mr. Adams' voice booms over the meadowland, so loud and sure that it cuts through Santana, and she shivers at the sound of it.

"Circle up, you lot!"

All around Santana, the other members of the company peel from their vehicles, hopping to the ground on heavy clodhopper boots and light performance slippers, all looking with interest to where Mr. Adams stands boldly posed atop a flatbed cart, a brown, leather attaché with brass snaps propped against his knee at his side, and Ken in the grass in front of him. Mr. Adams faces the wagon bay with his arms outstretched to the assembling crowd. Puck snatches up his rucksack and Santana's valise from the wagon and nods for Santana to join him amidst the company congregation.

By now, the clouds that covered the sky at the depot have begun to dissipate and an even, golden sun climbs over the horizon. Birds chatter in the trees that encircle the camp, and a choir of frogs chirrups somewhere in the distance, filling out their throats with strange fat sounds.

Mr. Adams commands more attention than nature, standing on the wagon, his shoes perfectly shined and outfit as flamboyant as ever. Santana can't recall ever seeing him so early in the day before or on the outskirts of camp, away from his private business tent. She quirks an eyebrow at Puck, intending to ask him the nature of Mr. Adams' business with the company today, but she doesn't get the chance to speak before Mr. Adams answers her question himself.

"As you well know, Fridays are paydays here at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus," Mr. Adams begins, eyeing the company as they pool around the wagon, each hand and performer looking up at him with mingled eagerness and curiosity.

(Santana didn't know that Fridays were paydays at the circus.)

(Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that circus performers received pay for their work at all, though Puck told her as much before she got her name on the lists.)

"As well you know, these are times of economic uncertainty, and particularly for a family operation such as our own. While we continue to provide the best entertainment available in this Western Hemisphere to our patrons, we draw considerably smaller crowds than once we did. The fact is that folks are less willing to shell out a nickel to see the circus than they were in a more bounteous era. I would therefore beseech your understanding, my friends, and call upon your extraordinary patience, which is perhaps the greatest virtue that this company has to offer."

Mr. Adams searches the crowd of his employees, his stark blue eyes deep with something that resembles regret. His speech seems a strange one to make on a payday, and Santana wonders what he means by it. The crowd titters around Santana—Puck at her left elbow, Blaine the trilby tramp at her right, and the Flying Dragon Changs in front of her—and Santana wonders, briefly, if Mr. Adams always prefaces his Friday business with such solemn words, perhaps in order to remind his employees that they ought to feel grateful for their salaries.

"Does he always address the company like this before he pays them?" Santana asks, nudging Puck in the side to get his attention.

Puck spares Santana a glance and opens his mouth to reply to her, but he can't manage to say anything before Mr. Adams continues speaking.

"I would also call upon your forgiveness in advance of the news with which I now must present you: namely, that I haven't the funds to fill your paychecks in full this week—"

A throaty groan rises up from the crowd, and someone near the back shouts something obscene. Mr. Adams simply raises his voice and continues to speak, waving his hand to quiet the company.

"—but I'll dispense what I can to you at present, as well as some notes payable for reimbursement at a later date. I hope to recuperate some of our losses come Independence Day next week! The people of Onawa, Storm Lake, and Ackley have traditionally shown us substantial generosity. Once certain transactions transpire—"

"He means once he and Fabray cut their deal," Puck mutters.

"—within the next several days, I'll be able to fill your checks in full. If you just hold out for one week, I'll satisfy all debts and rectify the situation! I ask for your patience!"

Even Mr. Adams' lion's roar can't silence the general grumble of perturbation that rises up from the company at the news of this shortchange. Several circus folk cuss most loudly, while many others shout boos, as though Mr. Adams had just performed a poorly executed trick in the ring. Someone shouts _How about you go without pay for a week?_ and tosses what looks like a small stone in the direction of the flatbed upon which Mr. Adams stands.

Santana shrinks on the spot, uncomfortable in the midst of so much discontent.

Just then, it occurs to her for the first time that she knows very little about how the circus at large regards Mr. Adams as their employer. Puck seems dog-loyal to Mr. Adams and even now refrains from expressing any sort of disappointment concerning the situation at hand, but Santana gathers that not every member of the company shares Puck's enthusiasm for the man whose name glitters upon the marquee.

"Ken will handle the dole, as per the usual. You can direct all questions to him," Mr. Adams says sharply, clearly annoyed with the company's intolerant reaction to his news.

Mr. Adams offers a curt nod to the crowd, then turns cleanly on his heel and jumps down from the back of the flatbed cart, sending up a flurry of moths from the grass where he lands. He hurries away into the early morning mist, the gold cufflinks on his suit winking against the sunrise glare.

"Come on, ladybird," Puck says, chucking Santana's elbow and gesturing for her to follow him to where a queue has already begun to form in front of Ken, who's taken the attaché from off the flatbed and now holds it possessively in his arms.

"What are we doing?" Santana stammers, hurrying to keep up with Puck as he claims a place at the back of the line.

Puck spares Santana an amused look. "Getting our paychecks—or at least what part of 'em we can get," he explains, and Santana halts mid-stride.

It had never occurred to Santana that she would have a paycheck of her own.

Until the young millionaire offered her a one-hundred dollar bill on the midway in St. James, Santana had seldom handled money before in her life, except for on those rare occasions in her younger years when she had snooped through the pockets of her father's leather wallet and played with his spending change, as children are wont to do. Santana's grandmother kept a small tin of funny-looking foreign coins stashed in the drawer of her bedside nightstand, but she only allowed Santana to look at them on very rare occasions.

(They bore imprints of narrow-lipped men with strong jaws, all labeled ALFONSO with long strings of X's and I's demarcated after their names.)

Santana can't remember ever possessing any bills or coins of her own or receiving an allowance, even on Christmas or her birthday. Her father always dealt with the finances for the bachelor cottage, ordering groceries from the corner store to fill the cupboards so that Santana and her grandmother never went hungry and making payments to the old gardener who tended the cottage grounds with perfect regularity, sparing them the necessity to do so.

Because Santana has never possessed any money of her own, she has also never considered what she might do with money should she possess it, and now she suddenly feels very foolish because she hasn't the first idea how to either spend or save her paycheck.

Aside from that which money cannot buy her, Santana wants for nothing at the circus. Ma Jones feeds her three meals a day, if Santana will sit for them, and the costume on Santana's back and the tent over her head at night keep her both clothed and housed far better than she would be if she had remained in New York upon her father's death. Unlike Puck, Santana needn't spend money on aftershave, and, unlike Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester, Santana hasn't the responsibility of shopping to provide for anyone else in the company outside herself.

(There's only one thing in the world Santana truly wants, and she can't have it anyway, no matter how many paychecks she saves to her name.)

Before she can stop herself, Santana thinks that she would like to buy a book, not for herself but for Brittany—because, after all, Santana did promise to teach Brittany to read.

(The hardback version of "Sara Crewe.")

(To love a person's favorite book is to love a secret part of her, soft and hidden and curious.)

(Santana feels another deep and scathing ache.)

Since they managed to secure a spot near the front of the line, it doesn't take very long before Santana and Puck reach Ken, who scarcely pretends to hide his disgust at the sight of them. He snarls a greeting to Puck and then reaches his piggy fingers into the attaché, rifling through its contents and muttering under his breath_ Karofsky, Kemper, Kuntz, Peters, Pierce, Pierce, Podinzky, P..., P..., P..._ until he settles on Puckerman.

"Thank you kindly, Kenny," Puck says smugly as Ken hands him an off-white envelope.

Ken scowls at Puck, and Puck smirks.

Ken offers an envelope to Santana. "Little missus," he all but growls, rolling his eyes at Santana's amazement as she takes what he proffers her.

Puck drags Santana away from Ken by the sleeve of her shirt before she can thank Ken for paying her at all. Once he and Santana stand clear of the tumult of the line, Puck unceremoniously opens his envelope, splitting it open in a jagged line with one of his thick, rough forefingers. He eyes its contents scrupulously. After a second, he lets out a sigh, buzzing his lips together, clearly disappointed.

"Mr. Adams will make good on the note payable," he mutters, more to himself than to Santana.

Santana glances between Puck and the envelope in her own hand. Very gingerly, she inserts her fingernail between the envelope tab and its backing, slitting it open with a single, clean motion. She only manages to catch a glimpse of the paper inside the envelope—PROMISSORY NOTE J.P. ADAMS & SON TRAVELI—before Puck rips it from her hands.

"If you don't mind, I'll hang onto that, ladybird," he says, tipping his hat to her. When Santana opens her mouth to complain at the sudden theft, Puck smirks. "Boarding houses ain't cheap, ladybird," he says, his tone somewhere between apologetic and smug. "You've got to contribute to the upkeep of this family, too, you know. Fair's fair."

Though Santana hadn't had any real intentions as to how she might spend her money, she still feels annoyed that Puck would take it from her without asking her permission first. All the same, she knows that she owes Puck a debt; he has paid her way from his own pocket since her father died, and he isn't exactly a millionaire or even a wealthy surgeon. Santana closes her mouth in defeat, knowing better than to argue against Puck for taking her paycheck when she owes him so much more than she can even calculate.

"Thank you, ladybird," Puck says quietly, and she doesn't nod or look at him.

(Even if Puck requisitions Santana's every paycheck from now until the end of days, it still won't cover all he's done for her since leaving New York, Santana realizes.)

"Are we supposed to go to work now?" Santana asks dully.

"Sure thing," Puck says, pressing a kiss to Santana's hair before he turns away from her, taking his rucksack, her valise, and their two paychecks along with him as he starts off in the direction of their tent. "Go find Ma Jones or Mrs. Schuester—they'll have work for you!" he calls.

It doesn't take long for him to disappear into the mist. As Puck goes, the crowd disperses with him, leaving Santana nearly alone in the wagon round up, listless and still cold with the earliness of the day. Santana remains still for a long time after that, just breathing and wondering. She feels lost even though she knows exactly where she stands.

* * *

><p>The campsite in Onawa rolls on wavelike hills, more uneven in its ground than any previous campsites Santana has encountered with the circus before. Birds caw and cackle from overhead and along the tree line in the distance. The white city runs up against a border of green-topped oaks and buckeye and a bend in a creek adjoined to the river-like lake Santana spotted earlier from the depot. A series of bluffs rises just beyond the forest in the distance, casting long shadows over the circus as the sun mounts higher in the early morning sky.<p>

Santana wanders toward the heart of camp, not headed anywhere in particular. She knows she ought to go to the mess pit to offer help to Ma Jones, but she doesn't want to risk happening upon Brittany there. Briefly, Santana considers trekking to the circus side of camp and hiding out in her booth all morning; Brittany would never find her on the midway, and no one could yell at her there, either.

Unfortunately, Santana doesn't have occasion to take her leave before a sharp voice pretending to be saccharine cuts through her thoughts.

"Don't go any further!" Mrs. Schuester snips, appearing behind Santana as suddenly as Ma Jones might do.

"Ma'am?" Santana says blearily, stopping in the grass.

Mrs. Schuester carries a folded section of fabric and a sewing kit in her arms. At a glance, Santana sees that the fabric belongs to one of the heroic blue knights' shifts that the boys wear during the opening sketch.

"The Evans boy put a hole through his shift," Mrs. Schuester informs Santana, holding up the costume for Santana to see.

Sure enough, Santana spots a small tear about the size of her own thumbprint just over the area where Sam's heart would be.

"Horseplay, no doubt," Mrs. Schuester grouses. "My girls are already busy preparing for Mr. Adams' Independence Day extravaganza and haven't a moment to spare for making petty repairs like this one. Careless! I was going to set Brittany Pierce to mending it, but you'll do a might better job than she could, I suspect—"

It happens so quickly that at first Santana hardly realizes that anything has changed.

One second, Mrs. Schuester prattles on about how Santana would do well to mind her stitches and to not waste any thread closing the hole, and, in the next second, Brittany Pierce appears from between two tents located alongside Mrs. Schuester and Santana, wearing a bright and rapscallion mischief-making grin.

_I love you._

Santana feels it more than thinks it but then jolts, horrified that she may have said it aloud. Her heart flutters like the wings of a hunted bird, and she gasps.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

"Mrs. Schuester, Ma Jones said you were looking for me—," Brittany starts, but then stops when she sees Santana. Her expression shifts from her troublemaking grin to one of genuine warmth and what seems almost like relief. "Hey, darlin'!" she says cheerfully. "Long time no see!"

Santana has never felt so sweet and so sorry all at once before in her life. Her whole self wakens to Brittany and blooms for her but also thrums with a low, raw ache.

Though Santana has loved Brittany since they first met, Santana has never spoken to Brittany knowing that Brittany loved her. Now that Santana knows that she loves Brittany, she finds that she hardly can think of what to say to Brittany at all. Santana doesn't want to tell her secret, but somehow it seems like she has nothing but her secret to tell and also that her secret must be everywhere on her, visible for the whole world to see.

(Is Brittany always as perfect as this?)

Something lodges in Santana's throat, and she stares without meaning to do it.

_Oh God. Oh God. Oh God._

"Oh, there you are!" Mrs. Schuester says, drawing a hand to her heart, acting only half as surprised at Brittany's sudden appearance as Santana feels for it.

"And there's Santana," Brittany deadpans, wearing her blank teasing face. "I've been looking for her all day."

(Santana tries not to allow her heart to feel too much when she hears that Brittany searched for her, but she fails and fails and fails.)

Brittany's pertness seems to confuse Mrs. Schuester, which is exactly how Brittany would have it. Mrs. Schuester's mouth falls open and she peers at Brittany and Santana as one would at illegible handwriting smeared across a yellowed paper. After a moment of deliberation, Mrs. Schuester shoves Sam's knight shift into Santana's arms along with the sewing kit.

"Listen, missy!" Mrs. Schuester says in her sharp, angry staccato. "I'll have no tomfoolery from you! You finish up this job, and get it back to me before lunch, and don't allow Brittany to distract you from it, you hear? Mind—your—stitches!"

Mrs. Schuester's wide mad eyes lock with Santana's, and Santana cowers, only able to nod in response. Thankfully, Mrs. Schuester accepts the gesture as deference enough for her liking.

"And no skylarking from you!" Mrs. Schuester warns, directing this next order at Brittany.

"Yes, ma'am," Brittany says cheekily, wearing the kind of smirk that Santana's grandmother would have called _precoz_.

Mrs. Schuester bristles, annoyed that Brittany has disrespected her in such a manner that she can't prove the disrespect. She begins to say something harsh but then decides against it, apparently convinced that Brittany isn't worth her breath.

Rather than say anything more, Mrs. Schuester takes her leave, stomping off in the direction of her dressing tents, skirt hiked to her ankles. The instant Mrs. Schuester disappears beyond the tent row, Santana's chest floods with anxiety.

She's alone with Brittany.

_Oh God. Oh God. Oh God._

Santana knows she oughtn't to look at Brittany the same way she knows she oughtn't look directly at the sun, and yet she does it anyway, unable to stop herself, though she would do anything but look. She finds Brittany watching her with the same fervent, all-seeing interest as always, wearing a satisfied smile, like her day has finally just begun after a series of false starts.

Today Brittany's beauty carries with it a subtly Santana had never noticed before. An almost-sadness lingers around Brittany's teardrop eyes and at the corners of Brittany's dainty mouth, pretty as primrose petals strewn across a kitchen table. Brittany interests Santana even more now than she did on the first day they met by the tents, and everything in Santana rises high to meet her.

_I love you._

Santana feels a prick upon her heart, as lively and quick as when she catches her fingertip upon a sewing needle by mistake.

"—I tried to find you last night after the show," Brittany's saying, "but you disappeared better than Rachel Berry does during her daddy's magic show." Brittany pauses just then, seeming to notice something different in Santana's countenance. Her brow furrows. "You okay, darlin'?" she asks. "You're really, really quiet this morning."

She frowns, concerned, her gaze darting from Santana's eyes to Santana's mouth and back again. She waits for Santana to answer, patient and worried.

Santana wishes she could laugh and tell Brittany it's nothing. She wishes that she and Brittany could steal away together somewhere to sew Sam's shirt in peace, doing less work than laughing as they spend their morning in each other's company. She wishes that they could be alone together, but she knows how that would end.

They have to keep their distance from each other, even if Brittany doesn't know it.

Santana can't be close to Brittany without loving her—not yet.

She doesn't know how to do it.

(The part of Santana that doesn't speak but only feels isn't sure it wants to.)

All at once, Santana feels a rainstorm kind of sad or like she would the day after a funeral. Never has she experienced such loneliness standing beside Brittany, even on the night when Brittany's father boxed Brittany's ear and Brittany seemed so strangely far away.

If Santana allows herself to say a single word, she'll betray herself and tell Brittany the truth. If she reveals the truth, then Brittany's concern will change to confusion and fear. Santana can't stand to imagine how it would feel if Brittany ever weren't happy to see her.

"I—," Santana says, losing her voice in her throat, unable to either fully look at Brittany or look away from her at all.

Santana feels herself run up against that invisible wall inside her, hard.

Half of her wants to take Brittany's face in her hands and kiss Brittany breathless, and half of her wants to sit down on the grass and sob. She feels utterly helpless and all at once both lost and home every time she looks in Brittany's eyes.

(Whenever something has upset Santana at the circus before, Brittany has always kissed it better.)

(An ache, an ache, an ache.)

Brittany notices Santana's strangeness. "Are you all right, darlin'?" Brittany asks, her brow scrunching up even more tightly than before. "Your hands are trembling," she says, pouting out her lip and reaching for Santana's wrist.

Santana closes her eyes tightly just as Brittany's fingertips ghost over her skin. She doesn't know whether to curl to Brittany's touch or to run from it.

"Darlin', what's wrong?" Brittany says. Her manner conveys a worry that causes Santana to feel both grateful and guilty at once. Santana doesn't mean to frighten Brittany, but she can't seem to answer her, either.

"Brittany!"

Daniel Pierce's desiccated voice carries on the wind, and Santana opens her eyes to see him just as he appears at the end of the tent row, his coonskin cap in his hands and bandolier empty of its knives but still strung across his chest.

Mr. Pierce ignores Santana but stalks toward his daughter at a soldier's grueling pace. Santana stiffens where she stands and glances at Brittany's left ear—still slightly pink and swollen, peeking out from behind a curtain of Brittany's pretty hair—with a quiver.

Santana has never felt so simultaneously happy and unhappy to see anyone in her life.

"C'mon, Britt," Mr. Pierce says gruffly, stopping about ten paces away from where Brittany and Santana stand. He gestures for Brittany to follow him back in the direction of their tent. "You know I need you today, baby girl."

He speaks with a strange stiltedness to his words, like it hurts him to say each one, and acts entirely blind to Santana, like he can't even see her.

(Brittany acts like she can see nothing else.)

"Sorry, Daddy," Brittany says after a minute, glancing between her father and Santana, her brow still furrowed with confusion and concern. Her eyes fix on Santana's face, searching Santana for something. If Brittany finds what she looks for, Santana will never know it. "I'll see you later, darlin'," Brittany whispers, face shifting into a queer expression.

(It causes Santana to feel as if she's forgotten something.)

Brittany reaches toward Santana again and gives Santana's wrist a little squeeze. She keeps her gaze on Santana the whole time she walks away, taking quick steps over the grass on agile feet.

(Brittany looks at Santana like Santana has become someone brand new to her.)

Santana doesn't answer Brittany's farewell, just watches as Brittany finds her way to her father's side and then follows him in the direction of their family tent, feeling as listless and strange as one of Mr. Hoffmann's lost souls. She wants so much to call out to Brittany after Brittany goes, but she doesn't know what she would say.

(Except, except, except.)

* * *

><p>The queer expression Brittany wears walking away lingers with Santana all the way back to her tent, vexing her.<p>

(It seemed strangely like hurt.)

If Santana hadn't known it for certain before, she does now: she loves Brittany Pierce past her bones and her blood, deep in the sweetest quick of her. When Brittany went away with her father, it was all Santana could do not to follow her, and, even now, Santana feels that persistent tug of the invisible string, willing her to wander wherever Brittany lists to go.

Santana finds herself woozy even from their brief encounter, confused because her heart wants what her mind declares impossible, sore with wanting what she supposes that she cannot and must never have. The circus seems grayer than usual, less magic and more sleight. Pepper clouds of obnoxious gnats and mosquitoes swarm at Santana from the grass, and the daylight sears her eyes, oppressively bright. Weeds crumple, withered, underfoot.

Part of Santana wishes that she could just lie down to sleep forever.

(Most of her wishes that she could just follow Brittany to the ends of the earth.)

When Santana throws open the flaps to her tent, Sam's knight shift and Mrs. Schuester's sewing kit tucked under her arm, she hardly expects to find the place occupied, much less by a half-naked Noah Puckerman, barely tugging his gypsy knickers up over his cream-white behind.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Puck cusses at the intrusion.

"Oh God!" Santana cusses back, closing her eyes and shuttering the tent flaps at once.

(Santana can hear Puck blundering about inside the tent, knocking into this and that, though she can't see him.)

After a minute, the canvas tent flaps swish against each other, and Puck's voice speaks.

"Man alive! Ain't you heard of knocking, ladybird?"

"I didn't think you'd be here," Santana stammers, peeking her eyes open to find Puck clothed, for the most part, still without his shirt and vest but with his pants firmly fastened at his waist by a belt. He shows no sign of a blush, but Santana can feel one on her own skin everywhere. Puck ushers Santana inside the tent, and she obliges him, though gingerly.

"Sorry, ladybird," Puck apologizes, turning his back on Santana to rustle through his rucksack. "Today's our bath day, and I thought I'd fit mine in before lunch."

"I didn't know it was bath day again," Santana says stupidly, looking away as Puck retrieves his shirt and vest from his rucksack and hustles them over his head, one after the other.

Puck adjusts his costume and smirks, tucking his shirt into his knickers like a baker folding over bread dough with quick and practiced hands. "Every three days, ladybird," he reminds her. "You can take your turn whenever you like—though you should try to fit it in before the show bell rings this time, if you can."

Santana winces. "You heard about that?"

Puck nods, chuckling. "Ol' Kenny made sure I heard all about it," he says kindly. "He says I ought to have the show schedule tattooed on your forehead so that you can't help but see it every time you look in the mirror, but I told him you ain't vain enough that it would help you to remember anyway."

Santana rolls her eyes and smirks. "Thanks," she says dryly.

Puck finishes buttoning his vest, rolling his shirtsleeves, and tucking his sashes into place. When he sidles up close to Santana under the apex of the tent, his skin smells freshly scrubbed, like tallow and menthol, but the stink of campfire, sweat, and tobacco still clings to his clothing. He chucks Santana's elbow and sets his hat upon his head.

"I've gotta go help Finn and Shane move hay bales into the elephant pen," he says, smiling a small version of his idiot smile, "and you'd best get that sewing job done before Mrs. Schuester has something to say about it. I'll catch up with you at lunch, all right?"

He acts as if Santana never spurned him last night.

(It always surprises Santana how quickly Puck will forgive her faults.)

"All right," Santana repeats, watching him disappear out the tent flaps, feeling strangely reluctant to let him go.

It isn't that Santana wants to spend time with Puck in particular, but having him in the tent with her would save her from sitting alone with her thoughts. Santana isn't ready to feel lonely again so soon after watching Brittany walk away.

(She feels as if she's forgotten something important.)

Of course, spending time with Puck wouldn't be without its discomforts, either. Just thinking on him causes guilt to rise up in Santana like a torrent, for she realizes that she can't love Puck because her heart already belongs to Brittany.

Santana sets down in the grass beside her cot with a heavy sigh, spreading her sewing work out in front of her and trying to no avail not to think too much about the time when Brittany appeared in her tent to help her finish the shifts.

Brittany is perfect in her memories, a special kind of riddle that Santana never can seem to answer but which also never seems to frustrate her, though she cannot solve it. If only Brittany possessed some fault, Santana might be able to fall out of love with her. But Brittany doesn't possess any faults—or at least not any that Santana can't abide.

True, Brittany can behave unpredictably, and Santana never can seem to guess her next turn, but after a lifetime of routine at the bachelor cottage, Brittany's unpredictability seems a treasure to Santana rather than a trouble.

Other people might dislike Brittany's doubletalk, but Santana adores it.

Even Brittany's habit of sometimes second-guessing herself simply causes Santana to want to build Brittany up and not to want to abandon her at all.

As Santana reaches for her needle and thread, she tries to think clearly concerning her situation—which is to say, of what might happen if she does fall out of love with Brittany and of what will happen if she doesn't.

If Santana falls out of love with Brittany, they can still be friends. Brittany will still search Santana out from every circus corner and make brilliant backtalk jokes to her and braid garlands for her hair. Santana will learn to govern her heart and to know the difference between friendship and something other than that.

(Has she forgotten something?)

Brittany won't hate Santana, and Santana won't be alone. Santana will keep these strange last few days as her secret, and Brittany will never know that Santana had loved her in the storybook way; she'll only ever see the best of Santana.

If Santana continues to love Brittany, though, then Santana will surely reveal her love to Brittany, no matter how hard she tries not to do so. Santana can already feel the secret growing inside her, so vast and big that it can't stay in her chest. Every time Santana thinks of Brittany, her heart seems to double in size and spill over from itself, starting anew.

If Santana continues to love Brittany, Brittany will ask Santana _Are you all right, darlin'?_ until finally Santana confesses the truth to her. And then the eagerness and hope will fade from Brittany's eyes, and she'll shy away from Santana, no longer understanding Santana as well as she did before—no longer understanding Santana at all. When Brittany asks what Santana means, Santana will try to explain and spill out the exact kinds of words that she really oughtn't to say.

_(Kiss you.)_

_(Hold you.)_

_(One true love.)_

Because Brittany is such a decent kind of person—the kind of person who took pity on the poor little yeller girl, new at the circus, from the start—Brittany won't shout at Santana or tell Santana how truly mistaken she is or even forbid Santana from seeing her outright. She'll simply fade from Santana's life and do so quietly, not coming to find Santana in circus corners or show Santana light in the secret parts of camp anymore. When the girls pass each other at shows or along tent rows, Brittany will smile a guarded smile to Santana, withholding the best parts of herself to prevent Santana from loving her more, or so she'll think.

But Santana will still love her, with this strange and desperate sort of love, all kinds of lonely the longer Brittany stays away.

The trouble, Santana thinks, is that Brittany won't understand how Santana loves her—not when Santana herself hardly understands it, not when it breaks every rule for Santana to do so, not when Brittany herself doesn't feel the same because she can't. Santana doesn't even want anything from Brittany, really, except just to spend time with her.

To be with her.

It wouldn't be so terrible for Santana to love Brittany if only Brittany could love her back.

(What is it that Santana's forgotten? It seems awfully important.)

For the briefest instant, Santana allows herself to think of how it could be if Brittany were to return her love. Santana imagines herself confessing her feelings and Brittany smiling her wise cat smile, saying something precious like _Same from me, darlin'_, confusing Santana until they pull in for a kiss.

A lucky, warm feeling spreads through Santana's chest even just for imagining such a scene, and suddenly Santana wonders if all the best loves are the ones that simply cannot be.

(Samuel Evans and his dirty dandelion love for Ma Jones.)

(Her father and angel mother.)

(Her own love for the knife thrower's daughter, deep and sweet and lonely.)

Strange how easy it is to imagine a life in which Brittany could return her love, how natural and how comfortable it seems. Strange that it scarcely strains her mind's eye to consider such a life at all.

(The forgotten thing dances just out of reach from Santana's memory.)

_(Ate una hebra de hilo alrededor de tu dedo para que recuerdes.)_

* * *

><p>Santana quickly darns the hole in Sam's shift using her grandmother's best ladder stitch, taking less than a quarter hour to finish the job. After repacking the sewing kit and returning both it and the mended garment to Mrs. Schuester at the dressing tents—Mrs. Schuester doesn't thank Santana for the help, but she also doesn't saddle Santana with any further chores, either—Santana decides to occupy her extra time before lunch taking her second circus shower.<p>

Though Santana still lacks a towel—she makes note to ask Puck if they even own a towel between them before their next bath day arrives—she knows the way the operation works much better now than she did before and so heads straight from the dressing tents to the bathing area located at their rear.

Just as she did before, Santana discovers the bathing area unoccupied. Pleased, she takes up a water bucket and the soap bar and claims a stall for herself, quickly disrobing, unbuckling her belt and peeling off her sashes, stepping out of her skirt and doffing her blouse. The ground in the shower feels slightly soggy underfoot, so Santana takes great care not to touch any part of her costume to the ground while draping it over the stall's joist to hang.

It still seems strange to her, standing nude in the middle of a field with nothing to preserve her modesty save for a canvas curtain—but, of course, everything about the circus still seems strange, and perhaps most of all who she herself has become since joining the lists.

Before pouring her bathing water into the colander, Santana strains several drowned gnats and a little baby bee from it with her hand. The communal tallow soap is already slippery and frothed from previous usage when she rubs it to her skin, and her flesh appears ruddy under the summer light, with an underlying red tone to it, like the roan that peeks out from beneath the brown of an old penny. Santana coats herself in lardy lather and steps into the water stream, closing her eyes as the water sluices her face.

In this private moment, her mind returns to Brittany and to earlier today when they found themselves alone together beside the tents. She remembers Brittany's strange expression and wonders what it means. She also wonders for what Brittany's father called Brittany away and why he needed Brittany today of all days.

(Santana needs Brittany always.)

_You mustn't love Brittany_, she reminds herself, pressing her fingers hard against her skin, scrubbing and scrubbing at what she cannot scour away.

For a second, Santana thinks that if Brittany were to find her now, she would confess everything freely and without regret, but then she chokes on a sob, knowing that even in the best of all possible worlds, Brittany could never return this great and terrible feeling that encompasses her heart, the flame to a briar in one of Mr. Wagner's almost fairy stories. Santana feels like a stranger to herself in her body and her bones; since leaving the bachelor cottage, she has only ever felt at home in just one place, and now she must not linger there.

(If she had known their kiss between the dressing tents yesterday would be their last moment in peace together, Santana would have kissed Brittany better and maybe never let her go.)

* * *

><p>Santana takes her time drip drying in the shower, listening carefully for the lunch bell all the while. She sits upon the three-legged stool, the grass saturated around her ankles, and rests the back of her head against the poles which comprise the shower stall, breathing heavily and feeling tired, despite how little she's worked today and the fact that she still has many hours ahead of her before she can go to sleep.<p>

Strange how heartbrokenness feels so much like exhaustion, and strange how Santana can barely breathe, though she sits out in the open air.

After a long while, Santana runs her hands over her skin once more and wrings her hair between her fingers as one of Ma Jones' girls might wring a dish rag into a wash tub. She draws a deep breath and begins to dress herself, taking many minutes to fasten her sashes and straighten her sleeves until finally she can justify hiding in her shower stall no longer.

Though Santana's skin feels clean, her clothes feel dirty and smell of the circus, sweat, train dust, grass stains, and smoke. They also bear the faintest hints of Puck and of Brittany, of sour-musk-tobacco chaw and campfire-windswept-apples-sweet. Santana steps out into the light, her wet toes catching in the dried grass, and heaves a heavy sigh.

The lunch bell rings just as Santana rounds the chuck and appears within the mess area, and Santana tenses, scarcely prepared for the incoming tide of circus folk who suddenly crowd the pit. She stands against the chuck, concealed in the shade, awaiting Puck's arrival. When she spots his floppy, black hat over the tumult, she waves to him. But he isn't the only one to catch sight of her signal.

"Hey, darlin'!"

Brittany beams her hello and bounds between the Bearded Lady and three burly supes to join Santana at the chuck at the same instant that Puck does. Brittany moves as gracefully as water, and, for a moment, Santana thinks that she could drown in Brittany, just from the single look shared between them.

Puck appears at Santana's left side. "Oh good! You got your shower," he says, smirking when he notices Santana's wet hair.

Santana wants to answer Puck, but she finds it nearly impossible to speak when Brittany joins her at her right side and links their pinky fingers together. Suddenly, everything feels too bright and too hot. Santana's heartbeat races and her stomach flips. Even though Santana's mind knows she oughtn't to feel so keen to see Brittany, her body warms to and welcomes Brittany all the same.

In the next minute, Sam and Finn sidle up to complete the circle.

"How about we go grab these ladies some plates?" Sam says genially, tossing a glance over his shoulder toward the kitchen table, where Santana knows that Ma Jones fusses concerning the spread.

(Finn squints at Santana like she's Jack and he's the Giant and he can't figure how to interact with a person so, so small.)

With so many people around, Santana feels boxed in and suddenly dizzy, with too many voices and colors closing in around her. Brittany doesn't seem to mind the company; she offers the boys an impish smile and swings her and Santana's hands between them, glad in a way that almost makes her seem proud. Brittany hums, and Santana feels it through her bones. It's all too much, too loud, too close.

"This lady would like two biscuits, please," Brittany says in her artless way, nudging Sam at her side with her hip. "How many would you like, Santana?" Brittany asks, nudging her just the same.

Santana all but melts at the sound of her name.

(How does Brittany always make it sound so sweet?)

(What is it that Santana's forgotten?)

"I, uh—," Santana stammers, even more stupefied than usual in Brittany's presence and totally overwhelmed by Brittany's voice and touch.

"How about you girls go find someplace to sit, and we'll get your lunch and bring it back?" Puck offers, peering across the mess pit toward the food table, his bottom lip bit between his teeth. He doffs his hat and turns it over in his hands, more impatient and hungrier than he would let on.

"Sounds good to me," Brittany agrees, glancing to Santana for confirmation of the plan.

Just a single look from Brittany leaves Santana breathless and reeling, like it did on the first night Brittany's eyes found Santana's from across the down day dance. Santana's thoughts spin, even dizzier than they were before.

"T-that's fine," she stutters, and, in the next second, the boys disperse, and Brittany leads her, laughing, away.

With all the benches filled and the day already oven hot, the girls waste no time in claiming a shady parcel of ground beneath the blue canopy on the far side of the mess, setting down in a heap with Brittany stretching out her legs, unladylike, to save spots for Puck, Sam, and Finn.

Santana wants nothing more than to act normal and to prove to herself that she can just be Brittany's friend, but even just sitting close to Brittany tugs at her heart; Santana wants to either kiss Brittany or to run quickly away from her, and she isn't sure which it is yet. She tries desperately to reserve herself, to act aloof and like a lady, as her grandmother would phrase it, not giving anything away and minding her words as she would the strictest rules.

For her part, Brittany smiles at Santana, pleased as Punch to spend a private moment with her before the boys return. She sprawls out, her long legs lazy upon the grass, seeming in no hurry to do anything, content as a cat in a sunbeam.

"Puck said you weren't well when I talked to him by the elephant pen this morning," Brittany announces in her artless way. "Are you feeling better now?"

Santana tries desperately to watch the grass and not Brittany, but finds she can't look away from Brittany's eyes. She stalls, lost in their deep, inimitable blue.

(Briefly, she wonders what business Brittany had by the elephant pen this morning. Didn't Brittany's father lead her away to their tent?)

It takes Santana several seconds to find her voice. "Yes," she says finally, speaking in that small voice she can't help but use around Brittany. She isn't exactly certain that what she says to Brittany counts as the truth. It isn't a lie, either, though.

Brittany tears up a plug of grass from the earth with her fingers. She offers Santana a sympathetic look, scrunching her brow together. "You sure?" she asks. "Because I've got some good medicine that might make you feel better."

Santana quirks an eyebrow. "You do?"

Brittany nods solemnly. "Laughter," she says seriously, and then, with the utmost carefulness, pulls an awful—wonderful—face, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue so that it touches her chin, tugging at her earlobes with her fingers to stretch her cheeks back.

Santana really oughtn't to find such a horrible look so adorable, but she can't help it: her heart all but collapses in on itself from feeling so sweet on Brittany.

Before she can stop herself, Santana blurts out, "Britt! You're not fair!" and falls back in the grass in a fit of giggles, her hands pressed to her chest. She means it more than ever and more than Brittany can know.

Puck and the boys return just at that moment, with Puck carrying his own plate and Santana's and Sam carrying his own plate and Brittany's, Finn trailing behind them, already picking scraps from his plate before he even sits to eat.

After distributing the food to the girls, the boys take their seats beside them, Puck sitting very close to Santana's legs—so close that Santana's grandmother would call their proximity improper—and Sam and Finn across from him. The boys each doff their hats in turn and smile though they weren't around to witness Brittany's joke, only hear Santana's response to it.

"Is Brittany misbehaving again, Ms. Santana?" Sam asks, grinning as he glances between Santana, who sits up and arranges her skirt to preserve her modesty as she recovers from her laughter, and Brittany, wearing a smug smile, as pleased with herself as she could possibly be.

"No way," Brittany defends, reaching for her fork to dig in to her potatoes. "Just following the doctor's orders." She won't stop smiling at Santana or watching her with ceaseless, happy interest.

Santana knows she oughtn't to like Brittany's drawling so much, but she can't help it. Her gaze shifts from Brittany's eyes to Brittany's lips and she suddenly imagines herself kissing the smile on Brittany's mouth, deep and low and sweet. The instant the thought occurs to her, Santana's cheeks heat.

No one seems to notice Santana's indiscretion. The boys shovel down their food and prattle about the elephants' hay situation, oblivious to Santana's impossible whim, and Brittany observes Santana with the same querying interest as always, unaware that Santana would like to kiss her in a more-than-friendly way.

The fact that their kisses have always meant something different to Santana than they have to Brittany occurs to Santana for the first time, and Santana burns with shame. She bites her lips into her mouth and forces herself to look away from Brittany and back to her own plate, feeling guilty, hopeless, and baffled all at once, though mostly still just so in love and caught up in everything Brittany.

From then on, Santana makes a point not to stare at Brittany. Instead, she watches her own toes and leans back against Puck's legs, never mind the impropriety. Conversation threads around her, but Santana joins none of it, intent upon keeping her secret even if she must never speak to anyone again to make it so.

A few times, Brittany glances up from her meal to ask Santana if she's all right, but Santana only nods to her and doesn't speak a word for fear of saying too much.

_(Kiss you.)_

_(Hold you.)_

_(One true love.)_

As the meal draws on, Brittany starts to nudge Santana's skirt with her toes, and Santana can't help but blush from the contact. Santana tries to scoot away from Brittany's touch, but with her back already leaned against Puck's legs, Santana finds that she has no room to retreat. Brittany wears a cat smirk and nudges her again.

Santana tries desperately not to smile as she mouths out the words _Not fair_.

(She fails.)

Brittany makes no such effort to hold back her grin; she beams at Santana with the kind of wily, playful ease that caused Santana to fall in love with her in the first place.

When the warning bell rings to signal that the company must prepare for the matinee show, Puck peels Santana up off the ground with a single strong-armed tug and brushes the stray grass from her skirt with the flat of his palm; Brittany watches over his shoulder the whole time, eyes trained to Santana's face.

"I'll see you soon," Brittany promises as Puck starts to lead Santana away.

"Okay," Santana says helplessly, linked to Puck at the arm, but still tied to Brittany by the same all-along-everyday invisible string as ever.

* * *

><p>When Santana arrives on the midway, she discovers a wood scrap nailed to the bottom of the sandwich board outside her booth, the wood scrap carefully set into place so as to omit the words that would identify Santana as a card reader. With its new editions, the sign now touts Santana as "MADAME ROSSETTI, GYPSY FORTUNETELLER: Reader of Both Palms"—a truthful enough byline if there ever was one at the circus.<p>

(Ken's handiwork, no doubt.)

After her initial laughter at the sign, Santana can't help but feel some shame concerning it. She had forgotten that she "lost" her cards yesterday. She had forgotten that Brittany's idea saved her. She had forgotten so many things except trying to fall out of love with Brittany.

Just thinking about Brittany again causes a guilty pang to play through Santana like a high, clear note on a piano. The truth is that Santana can trace every good thing that has happened to her since she arrived at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus back to Brittany Pierce in some way or another. Brittany has shown Santana nothing but kindness and Santana's heart has repaid Brittany not with simple gratitude but by foolishly falling in love.

(Will all good things cease in Santana's life if Brittany goes away?)

During the morning fair, Santana reads palm after palm, dazedly and without interest, the lines on her patrons' hands blurring together before her eyes like words on a water-damaged page. She mumbles vague promises to other people that they'll be happy if they mind this or that rule of commonsense, wondering all the while if she can ever be happy herself, no matter what rules she minds and doesn't mind.

When a young man asks her _Will I find my true love?_, Santana laughs at him and says wisely, _The trouble isn't in the finding, sir_, but then startles at her own boldness.

(When did she become so sensible and cruel?)

Santana reads no cards today, saved, as always, by Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. When the show bell rings, Santana leans back in her chair and sighs. Ken ought to make her a new sign: "SANTANA LOPEZ: The Girl Who Can Give Sound Advice to Everyone Except for Herself."

* * *

><p>Santana had hoped that Rachel Berry might have forgiven her for her meanness on the morning train ride by now, but she enjoys no such luck.<p>

When Santana enters the backstage area, Rachel greets Santana with what can only be described as theatrical apathy, turning her back on Santana with a jackknife deliberateness and drawing herself up in a huff as she straightens and re-straightens her costume needlessly. Rachel wears a stormy pout and sighs loudly at intervals. Her eyes look dark and fierce but still bear that same doe-woundedness that Santana put into them earlier in the day.

Puck spares Santana a commiserative look when she takes a seat at his side upon the bench, and Santana can only suppose that he knows far too well himself how it feels to draw Rachel's ire. Unfortunately, Puck's pity—if it is that—does nothing to rectify the situation or to help Santana, who suddenly realizes that Rachel's sourness toward her will prove more than just inconvenient when it comes to staging the show.

The fact is that with Rachel angry at her, Santana will have no one to cling to during the knight sketch who isn't Brittany.

When they parted ways at lunchtime, Brittany promised that she would see Santana soon. Now Santana can only suppose that Brittany meant she would meet up with Santana for the knight sketch. For the first time since arriving at the circus, Santana suddenly wishes that Brittany would deviate from her word, for she knows that if she spends the knight sketch in Brittany's company, she'll fall more in love with Brittany, not less.

(The whole world loves Brittany, brilliant under circus lights.)

(Santana loves Brittany everywhere—and especially in the big top where they shared their first fleeting kiss.)

Santana attempts to stick by Rachel without revealing her intention to do so as they make their way into the rings after the boys, but Rachel won't have it. When Santana sidles up beside her, Rachel flounces away from Santana to the fore of the ring, wearing more hurt in her eyes than ferocity as she goes. With Rachel out of reach, Santana briefly considers inserting herself amongst the girls from the Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie, but they recoil from Santana as if she were a dead mouse they discovered in their pantry cupboards while reaching for a sugar bowl, snarling at her in their harsh, sharp tongue, their expressions cold like ice.

For an instant, Santana stands still in the midst of circus motion, closing her eyes against the lights and willing Brittany not to find her, but when she looks out over the rings again, she instantly catches sight of Brittany's brilliant stage white.

The music swells and Brittany catches up Santana's hand.

_I love you_, Santana thinks helplessly as Brittany spins her to face the oncoming knights and their two sprigs of wildflowers—white shooting star and little purple lupine bursts—intertwine where they take hold of each other.

"Hey, darlin'!" Brittany shouts over the music, already giddy with the excitement of performance.

Santana holds her breath all through the knights' sketch and doesn't pay any mind to which boy she presents her favor as the act draws to an end. Somehow she feels that she's losing Brittany, though they spend the sketch hand-in-hand and all wrapped up in each other.

While Brittany laughs carelessly, Santana bears every care in the world in her heart. Santana had never wanted to hide anything from Brittany, but now it seems that she must hide everything—the true meaning behind her every look and word and breath—if she wants to keep close to Brittany at all.

When the grand parade draws to a close, Brittany leads Santana from the big top and into the open air. She lifts Santana's hand up close to her face and keeps it there, their fingers still laced together, dark and light and dark in light, all in a row. For a second, Santana thinks that Brittany might kiss her knuckles again, like she did inside Santana's tent when Santana tended her injury, and her belly turns over with wanting. Instead, Brittany simply holds Santana very still.

"Santana," she says seriously, "are you feeling well? You seem—"

Her sentence trails away and she fixes Santana with a deeply concerned look.

"Did Puck say something to you?" she whispers, her voice barely audible over the circus din.

Santana shakes her head no because it's the truth; Puck has nothing to do with how she feels right now. He doesn't know that Santana loves Brittany or that she wants nothing more than to stand on tiptoe and take Brittany's face between her hands and kiss Brittany until Brittany understands maybe a little—even just the leanest bit—about how Santana's heart beats for her and the fact that Santana would follow her anywhere, even though it frightens Santana half to death to think it. Noah Puckerman has no idea that Brittany has somehow taken root around Santana's ribs and that she flows inside Santana's veins and leaves Santana breathless, always wanting for more and more.

"Is it because of what happened with Rachel Berry on the train?" Brittany asks, slinging a furtive glance in Rachel's direction across the backstage area. "I heard some of Ma Jones' girls gossiping about it, but I bet it wasn't your fault, really. Rachel doesn't know when to stop talking sometimes, and once I slopped gravy on her shoes at supper, and she didn't forgive me for it for a whole week, but she'll probably forgive you sooner than that because you're nice. If you're worried about it, I could talk to her for you, though. Or I could even tell her that she's as loud as Methuselah, and then she'll be mad at me instead of you, maybe—"

(Santana has never heard Brittany ramble like this before.)

(Somehow, it's the sweetest thing Santana thinks that Brittany has ever said to her, amongst a million and one sweet things.)

"Hey!"

A gruff shout interrupts Brittany's prattling and both Brittany and Santana look up to see Ken waddling their way. He stops just a few feet from them and waves his hand at Brittany as if she's a naughty housecat he wants to shoo from a tabletop.

"Get back to yer side!" he orders. "Your father's looking for you!"

Brittany nods at Ken but doesn't immediately oblige him. Instead, she faces Santana with a pout, still holding their hands close to her between them.

"I hope you feel better soon, darlin'," she says in a quick whisper, her expression deep with something needful and new—an emotion Santana has never seen Brittany wear before.

Before Santana can reply, Brittany's eyelids flutter shut, delicate as moth's wings, and she presses a quick, sweet kiss to the back of Santana's hand. Santana's heart starts in her chest at the contact, and she looks immediately to Ken, wondering if he can see what Brittany means and what Santana means and what passes mistaken between them. Ken looks liable to shout again, but he doesn't have the chance to do so before Brittany pulls away.

"Take care," Brittany whispers, jogging past Ken in the direction of her own backstage area. She keeps her eyes locked on Santana over her shoulder the whole time she goes.

(Santana doesn't think she's ever seen the quick of them look so perfectly blue.)

* * *

><p>Santana takes in only about as much of the matinee as she did of the parade through Onawa earlier in the day on the way into town, scarcely aware of how the acrobats tumble or whether Jesse St. James manages to make his tiger walk on its back paws or not. When the time for the gypsy act arrives, Santana performs adequately but unemotionally, turning bland circles and shaking her tambourine a half-beat behind the music. She spends the remainder of the show perched at the aperture at the back of the big top tent, as per her usual habit.<p>

When the knife throwing act debuts, Santana forces herself to look away from the rings, turning to watch the children playing in the dirt behind her. Sam Evans' younger brother fixes her with a puzzled expression, curious about why she suddenly finds him and his playmates more interesting than whatever occupies the stage. Santana hasn't any answer for him, so she just hugs herself and waits for what seems like forever until the big top erupts with applause at her back.

(She lets out the breath she held for Brittany and returns to the aperture just in time to watch Brittany take her bow and scurry from the rings.)

During the final parade, Santana follows close to Puck, never mind his torches. When the gypsies make their exit from the tent, Santana all but gasps for air, a half-drowned woman breaking through the surface of the water, once they step outside.

"Why so skittish, ladybird?" Puck teases after the third time Santana checks over her shoulder to make sure Brittany hasn't followed her on their way back to the tent.

Santana decides to humor his question. "I just wish today could be over," she admits.

Puck smirks. "Well, you know what they say about wishes, ladybird," he cautions.

Santana almost hates to ask. "What?"

Puck flashes his devil grin: "If they were elephants, we'd be up to our elbows in shit—if you'll kindly pardon my French, ladybird."

Santana gasps a little at Puck's vulgarity—Abuela would have had Santana's father dismiss Puck as their gardener if she had ever heard any of his crudeness firsthand—but recovers enough to roll her eyes and scoff at his weak wit.

Puck chuckles and adjusts his gear satchel on his shoulder, amused at both his own joke and Santana's reaction to it. He bites his lip with his eyetooth, wolfish, and tries to steal a glance at Santana without her noticing it. Of course, Santana does notice it, and she'll be damned if Puck doesn't actually blush a little once he realizes as much.

(Santana shudders a bit.)

Puck clears his throat and looks away. "How about you ask Ma Jones if she needs some help preparing supper?" he suggests. "Sammy Boy told me he saw her fixin' to make some pies for tonight while he was raiding the chuck for biscuits this morning. She'd probably be real grateful for some help—and I know you like to bake a bit."

"I don't like to bake much at all," Santana grouses. "It's just something that my gr—"

"Well, it's better making pies with Ma than having Theresa Schuester get a hold of you. She's crazier than usual, what with the big Independence Day skit coming up," Puck interrupts, setting a hand on the back of Santana's head and mussing her hair until she flinches away from his touch.

(Puck hardly hears a word Santana says.)

(Brittany hears Santana, even when she says nothing at all.)

"Fine," Santana consents, mostly because she wants to rid herself of Puck's company—he's started to grate on her, being so forward—but also because, admittedly, she knows that he's right: Ma Jones will make a much better superior than Mrs. Schuester will today, if Mrs. Schuester's high strung reaction to Brittany's cheek earlier in the day indicates anything.

"There's a good ladybird," Puck praises, chucking Santana on the elbow as she starts to go one way and he another. "Let me know how the pies turn out!"

Santana grits her teeth all the way to the mess.

Thankfully, Ma Jones seems pleased to have Santana's help and assigns her a welcome task, as far as chores and baking go.

"I need someone to slice apples. My girls are busy grating cinnamon, elsewise I'd have them do it," Ma very nearly apologizes as she hands Santana her usual paring knife and directs Santana to the mess table to set about the task.

"It's no trouble," Santana says genuinely, watching as Ma shoulders the burlap sack of apples—it must weigh nearly thirty pounds, for its fullness—and follows Santana to her seat, setting the sack down against a bench leg once Santana chooses a spot.

"There's a lot of apples in there," Ma says uncertainly. "I could send for Brittany—"

"No!"

Santana doesn't mean to shout, but that hardly stops her from doing it. Both she and Ma flinch at her adamancy, and Ma quirks an eyebrow, confused if not concerned for Santana's strange behavior. Santana draws a breath, steadying herself. When next she speaks, she sounds much calmer.

"I mean, no," she says. "I can do this on my own. I wouldn't want to bother Brittany. I'm sure she has better things to—"

(Santana hadn't expected her voice to crack where it does.)

Ma stares at Santana as if she's never seen her before, teasing her lip between her teeth and looking Santana up and down, appraising her. After a second, Ma speaks again.

"Suit your fool self," she says warily, turning to go. "But I sorely doubt that Miss Brittany would count doing anything with you as a bother. I don't think I ever seen her take to anybody so quickly as she has to you, or even take to anybody at all, for that matter. Ain't hardly no one in this camp who understands the jibber-jabber that comes out of that girl's mouth, aside from you. If you're fixed to slice all them apples yourself, though, I'll let you to it. Lord knows I don't need to send one of my girls chasing after Brittany Pierce all up and down this camp when they have work to do of their own."

Ma doesn't wait for Santana to respond before sauntering back to her girls on the other side of the mess. Her parting words hit Santana like a blow to the gut. Have she and Brittany really become so inseparable that Ma Jones expects them to always appear as a pair? Is it really true that Brittany hadn't any close friends before her? Was Brittany lonesome before they met?

Santana feels a pang just wondering about it and flops down on the bench, dazed. She closes her eyes and breathes heavily through her nose, taking a long moment to collect herself. Somehow, Santana had always thought Brittany popular with the circus folk, but now that she comes to think about it, she realizes that Brittany only really seems friendly with Sam, who loves everyone in the same way that a dog loves its masters: freely and with his whole heart, if only he's allowed to do it. Is it possible that Brittany really has no other friends but Sam—that Brittany was lonely before she met Santana? How could Santana not have noticed?

Suddenly, Santana feels very remiss.

(She imagines Brittany sitting all alone, as quiet at the circus as she was at the bachelor cottage.)

Slowly and with stupid fingers, Santana reaches for her paring knife and fumbles an apple out from the burlap sack. A cold feeling fills her stomach despite the heat of the day. As she makes her first incision through the wax-round fruit skin, her eyes well with tears.

(She just feels so confused about everything to do with Brittany.)

(She doesn't want Brittany to feel lonely without her, but she herself feels lonely keeping her love a secret when she and Brittany are together.)

"Santana, are you crying?"

It had been too long since Ma had snuck up on her.

Santana looks up from her slicing to find Ma Jones standing across the table from her, carrying a large steel pot, presumably bringing it to Santana so she can fill it with apple sections. Ma stares at Santana with dark, careful eyes and wets her lower lip in her mouth, worrying it for just a second as she takes in the scene before her. Santana has never known Ma Jones to speak so softly before.

"I-I'm sorry," Santana apologizes automatically, wiping her eyes along the back of her wrist and biting at her lip to prevent more tears from falling. She hadn't realized she was crying, and now she feels foolish for doing it. She tries to swallow down her upset, but finds it difficult to do so when so many things trouble her.

(She just feels heartsore, down past her bones.)

"Are you not feeling well again?" Ma asks, setting her pot down on the tabletop and wringing her hands in front of her apron. Her girls peer across the mess pit from behind her, watching her conversation with Santana with wide, white eyes, as curious as a nest full of baby owls looking out from a tree.

Santana supposes that heartbrokenness counts as not feeling well or something close enough. Santana also supposes that she must look awfully pathetic to have elicited the concern of someone as no-nonsense as Ma Jones.

"No," Santana says, hating how piteous her voice sounds.

Ma's face turns impossibly soft, and she reaches across the table to set her hand over Santana's, stilling Santana's wrist where she holds her knife. Ma offers Santana a kindly smile.

"Why don't you get some rest before the next show, then? I can always have one of my girls slice these apples," she says. After a pause, she adds, "Lord knows they'd rather chop fruit than grate cinnamon anyway."

Santana gives a weak, watery laugh in response to Ma's joke. She wants to thank Ma for her charity, but can't seem to find her voice. Instead, she just meets Ma's eyes.

_Thank you._

Ma waves Santana away with a flippant hand. "Get on off to bed," she says firmly. "And don't you go walking about until you feel better, you hear?"

Santana nods her consent and extricates herself from the bench, wiping her tears away one last time. She suddenly feels very fond of Ma Jones when she never has before. Briefly, she thinks back to her first day at the circus, when she wanted Ma Jones to like her so very much, and supposes that Ma's tenuous care for her now may be the next best thing to that. She ducks her head to Ma in deference on her way out of the mess pit.

(Santana wonders, in a vague way, who allows Ma Jones to rest when her heart breaks for Sam Evans?)

* * *

><p>In her desperation, Santana prays to every devil who has ever ridden her back that she won't happen upon Brittany as she walks back to her and Puck's tent. And thankfully, at least one of them must hear her pleas.<p>

Santana stumbles blearily along the tent rows, her chest tight with suppressed sobs, her jaw set so firmly that it hurts, until she finds her own place, and though Santana feels terrible inside all the while as she goes, she at least doesn't encounter Brittany anywhere along her way.

Her tent runs hot as a fever on the inside, but Santana doesn't care enough to stay away from it. She flops down on the cot, burying her face in her arms and crying into the crook of her elbow, feeling as if she's inhaled jagged shards of glass. She chokes against her tears and her ribcage wracks with each fresh sob, her breastbone aching as if cracked.

Santana doesn't care if anyone outside the tent can hear her; she only wishes she knew what to do or how to act or even which cruel power cursed her so that she must love a girl who needs her love so as not to feel lonely but who must never know about her love or love her in return.

Just thinking on the injustice of it all, Santana quakes with anger—furious in the way that she was when she first realized that her father had lied to her about everything from his practicing name to the fact that she was his bastard and unacknowledgeable in every possible wise. She feels as frustrated as she does when she comes up against that wall inside of her or when she finds herself entangled in a mess of senseless rules. The deepest part of her wants to scream at someone for the unfairness of it all but also just to curl up and sleep and sleep and sleep. Sleep won't come to Santana, though, not even after she weeps for a long while, soaking her shirtsleeve in warm tears until they all but run dry and her voice gives out.

Having wept herself into exhaustion, Santana feels extremely childish and just lays still, ashamed, even in her solitude, for her tantrum. She waits until her breathing resumes a steady pace to roll onto her side, peeling her skirts away from the bottoms of her legs, freeing her skin to the air. Her hair sticks to her face and neck, and her body burns with heat and sweat. Santana will wait until the warning bell rings, and then, and then, and then—

She hears Puck coming down the tent row, speaking to someone—Blaine. Their voices trade back and forth as they approach the tent.

"Hudson owes me three whole bucks!"

"But, Noah, you cheated him to win that. Honestly, I think you probably owe him more than he owes you, like five or seven dollars, at least—"

"If I were honest, we wouldn't have a game, moron! Euchre ain't worth playing if you play it fair!"

"—which is why Ken wants Mr. Adams to ban it from the circus."

"Hold on! I'm gonna duck in here to grab my cards."

The tent flaps rustle and Santana stiffens on the cot. Her whole body turns rigid. She doesn't want to speak to Puck and she doesn't want him to know that she was crying. She cinches her eyes closed and feigns the sleep she can't seem to find in genuine.

"Oh, shit! Jesus Christ!" Puck hisses, and she hears him jump back.

"What is it?" Blaine asks from outside the tent.

Puck answers in a whisper. "Ladybird's in here sleeping," he says. "I just didn't expect to see her here is all."

"We could always ask the band guys to join in and borrow some of their cards so you don't have to wake her," Blaine suggests helpfully.

Puck doesn't answer aloud, but Santana hears him move. His feet shush across the grass. Santana can't be certain, but she thinks Blaine might take his leave, at that point. She feels a wave of body heat as Puck passes closely near her cot and then hears telltale rustling as he retrieves what must be his rucksack from the corner.

"Sweet dreams, ladybird," he whispers passing back by her cot, almost as if he can't help himself from saying it.

The tent flaps swish against each other and the darkness behind Santana's shut eyes changes to a florid orange as Puck opens the doors to the outside, letting in afternoon light. A second later, the tent flaps close and the tent turns dark again. Santana chances a peek at her surroundings and finds herself alone; she sighs in relief.

"Hey, Puck!"

"Brittany!"

Santana nearly falls off her cot at the sound of Brittany's voice. She tenses where she lays, her heartbeat speeding, and listens through the canvas as Brittany and Puck strike up a conversation probably just a foot or two outside the door, holding her breath all the while.

"Have you seen Santana around? She disappeared right after the show."

"Uh, yeah. She's actually, um, asleep in there. I don't think she's feeling well again."

"Is she okay?"

"Oh, I'm sure she will be. I sent her to help Ma Jones with supper. If she were that bad off, Ma would've called for Mrs. Evans to tend her, don't you think?"

For a second, the conversation falls silent and Santana imagines Brittany furrowing her brow, trying to see around Puck and into the tent, not quite sure if she trusts his flippant reasoning or not. After a beat, Brittany responds.

"Well," she says slowly, "if she needs anything when she wakes up, I can get it for her. And tell her that I hope she feels better and that I—" Her voice trails away. Another beat. "Just tell her that I'm here, if she wants."

"Sure," Puck says listlessly.

He sounds perfectly bored with both Brittany and the topic of their conversation. After that, Brittany doesn't speak again, and neither does Puck. Santana can't be certain, but she thinks she hears motion and guesses that they've both gone their separate ways leaving the tent behind.

(Santana finally breathes.)

"I mustn't love Brittany," Santana whispers to herself.

(Her heart has never, ever listened to her less.)

* * *

><p>Santana hasn't any notion as to how long she remains, sweltering, inside her tent. She remains in her cot, breathing heavily, as if she had just run ten miles; worrying her hands together; and fighting back more tears; thinking all the while about how Brittany is the most perfect person. If nothing else, Santana wants Brittany to know of her own wonderfulness, even if everything falls to ruin between them. Brittany has given Santana so many gifts; Santana really ought to tell her thank you, regardless—<p>

Puck returns to the tent just before the warning bell rings, reeking of scorched pipe tobacco smoke and carrying a wad of bills in his hand. He sets down on the edge of the cot and presses his hand to Santana's shoulder, stirring her from her fake sleep.

"Ladybird," he says gently, his voice scarcely above a whisper. "Are you feeling well enough to go on tonight? 'Cause I'll tell Ken where he can stick it if you're not."

He smoothes back a lock of her hair from her face and smiles the most modest version of his idiot smile at her as she opens her eyes and sits up from her bed.

Her voice sounds scratchy and small when she answers him. "I can go on," she says, mostly because she doesn't want to cause any trouble with Ken for Puck or Ma Jones if she can help it but also because she knows that Brittany will worry for her if she never makes it to the stage.

"That's a good girl," Puck says and he bends to kiss Santana's hair, his hand curling at her waist.

Santana tenses and turns her face away from Puck to stave off any unwanted kisses. The warning bell rings just as Santana removes herself from under his touch.

"Come on," he says softly, helping Santana to rise from her place.

The afternoon fair passes uneventfully. Santana reads more palms and dispenses more practical advice—if you think your mule will die of bloat, you ought to consult a veterinary surgeon; when deciding what career path you ought to follow, you should ask the advice of someone who knows you well and whose judgment you trust; if an old quarrel troubles you, you should seek the forgiveness of the person you insulted—reminding herself between every patron that she mustn't love Brittany, she mustn't love Brittany, she mustn't love Brittany as anything other than her friend.

When the show bell rings, Santana gathers her things and walks slowly to the big top, collecting a Kelly green headscarf for her veil and a wilted cut of Cupplant for her favor from Mrs. Schuester's girls as she enters the backstage. Puck stands up from his seat the instant he spots Santana approaching him and rushes to her side, taking her by the elbow as though she were an invalid. Rachel Berry observes their interaction, curiosity evident in her eyes along with her previous wariness, displeasure, and hurt.

"Is your wife not feeling well?" Rachel asks, feigning disinterest, though Santana can tell she cares to know Puck's answer rather a lot.

Rachel glances between Puck and Santana and even scoots over on her bench to make room for Santana to sit beside her. Santana offers a guilty look as Puck releases his hold on her.

"Nope, she doesn't," Puck says simply to Rachel. He shifts his attention to Santana. "You know you don't have to go on if you're still shaky," he reminds her.

As much as the option to avoid seeing Brittany in the rings tempts Santana—she mustn't love Brittany as more than a friend—she knows that skiving out on the show will ultimately bring her more trouble than it will relief. She shrugs a single shoulder and sets to arranging her veil over her hair, determined not to let on as to how nervous she feels.

"Here," Rachel Berry interjects. "Let me help you with that."

Before Santana can speak, Rachel reaches around her and sets her veil into place, fussing a little with the corners and smoothing out Santana's blouse at her shoulders with an especial care. When Santana meets Rachel's eyes, she finds Rachel's old woundedness and guardedness gone. Now Rachel looks on Santana solely with pity.

"There," Rachel says kindly, tucking the veil fully into place.

"Thank you," Santana croaks, suddenly feeling very fond of Rachel Berry, though she hadn't much liked Rachel before.

(Briefly, Santana wonders how sickly she must look to have everyone she previously displeased at the circus suddenly eager to look after her.)

The show bell rings and Puck takes his leave to join the other knights in the ring. As Rachel and Santana await their cue to join the fellows in the big top, Rachel slides her hand over Santana's on the bench and gives it a little squeeze. A lump rises to Santana's throat.

(Rachel Berry is the single most obnoxious person Santana knows but also one of the kindest.)

Rachel remains at Santana's side when they enter the big top for the sketch, holding Santana by the elbow as Puck did before. The two girls linger near the back of the tent, far away from the audience, with Rachel for once purposefully avoiding the spotlight, all for Santana's sake.

Santana feels somewhat relieved when she looks out at the company already assembled in the rings and notices that the portion of the equestrienne coterie assigned to Brittany's backstage area occupies the front of the ring, which gives Santana reason to believe that perhaps Brittany made an early entrance to the big top, as did they.

Though Santana watches for Brittany all through the sketch, she doesn't see her anywhere. Santana clings to Rachel and presents her Cupplant to Kurt at the end of the performance, barely sparing him a nod before she allows Rachel to whisk her hastily into the grand parade.

"You look absolutely wan, Santana," Rachel announces as soon as they emerge from the big top. Before Santana can jerk away, Rachel touches her knuckles to Santana's brow and frowns. "You feel very warm," she says sternly.

"It's hot in the big top," Santana defends.

Rachel seems not to like Santana's excuse but doesn't press the matter, perhaps fearing that Santana will shout at her again as a repeat of what happened on the morning train. She searches Santana with her dark, sad eyes, but for once in her life, she refrains from voicing her thoughts on what she sees. When Rachel takes a seat on the bench, she gestures for Santana to sit with her, but Santana declines the invitation.

"I'm going to watch the show," Santana says lamely, unable to explain that she needs to distract herself with the spectacle lest she drive herself mad with thinking in circles.

Santana heads to the aperture at the back of the big top, and Rachel doesn't stop her from going. Though Santana passes Puck preparing his torches along her way, he makes no moves to detain her, either. He offers her a consoling pat on the shoulder.

(Vaguely, Santana wonders if Puck would feel so sorry for her if he knew the root of her distress.)

The Flying Dragon Changs, Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie of St. Petersburg, Mr. Evans' clown troupe, and Jesse St. James the lion tamer all enact flawless performances and Santana's attention wanes from their perfection. With no bobbles or faux pas to concern her for their safety and the wellbeing of the circus, Santana quickly drifts away into daydream, imagining for the second time in the day what might happen if she were to ever reveal her perilous secret to Brittany.

Overhead, a gloaming overtakes the sky. The temperature begins to dip, though hardly enough to provide any noticeable relief from the heat. Santana sways on the spot, imaginary conversations and strong reminders to herself as to what she must not ever say to Brittany stewing in her thoughts, one alongside the other.

_I love you, Brittany._

_I love you back, darlin'._

_You mustn't love Brittany._

_You love Brittany so, so much._

When it comes time for the gypsy act, Puck appears at Santana's back and taps her on the shoulder, gesturing for her to follow him, saying nary a word. The audience blurs before Santana's eyes as she takes to the stage. She dances almost mechanically, setting a foot here and a foot there, spinning on her spot, hitting the heel of her hand to the tambourine, avoiding Puck's fire and Rachel's pitying glances, and holding her breath, though she doesn't know for what she waits, if anything at all.

After the gypsy act, Santana doesn't bother to take up her post at the back of the big top to hear Rachel sing as the Little Malibran, fearing that if she were to do so, the melancholic beauty of Rachel's voice might somehow drive her to tears. When Santana hears applause break out from the tent—crashing like the sound of waves upon a distant beach—she knows she ought to remain where she stands near the fire and not watch the act that follows Rachel's at all.

(She never has been able to keep herself from Brittany, though.)

(She returns to the aperture just in time to hear William Schuester summon the Pierces to the stage.)

With all her own good advice to herself forgotten in an instant, Santana steps through the aperture into the shadows at the back of the tent, waiting in the deep stillness of their umbrae, seeing everything before her, though she herself remains invisible under cover of dark. She hugs her ribcage tightly and watches as Brittany dances into the fore of the ring, waving to the audience. She feels vaguely like one of Mr. Poe's narrators, cloaking herself in gloom to observe the scene unseen.

Though Santana can't see Brittany's face, she somehow wonders if there isn't something different about Brittany's gait than usual as Brittany takes to the stage. Brittany seems careful somehow, which is not to say that Brittany was ever careless before but only that Brittany bears some new preoccupation along with her tonight.

Santana peers through the darkness, trying to read Brittany the same way she used to read her library books by lamplight after her grandmother bossed her into bed. However, she can't make anything of Brittany's new demeanor before Brittany assumes her pose in front of the target.

The whole audience holds its breath for Brittany before Mr. Pierce makes his first throw, and Santana holds her breath along with them, filled with the same sort of fluttery anticipation she felt awaiting the train that would take her westward from Grand Central Terminal just over a week ago. Back then, she had clutched her valise handle to busy her hands, but now she hasn't anything to hold and so wrings her fingers together, running her thumbs over her own knuckles, pressing into the soft flesh between her bones.

While Santana has often wondered if Brittany were a daytime girl or a nighttime one—and often supposed that Brittany is, above all, a timeless girl, beautiful in any light—she can't help but think that Brittany looks more beautiful at show time than perhaps at any other hour, with white light haloing her hair and her pale, pretty costume, drawing out her radiance for all the world to see.

Under the stage glow, Santana catches snatches of that same sad beauty she recognized in Brittany this morning hidden at the corners of Brittany's mouth and in the teardrop shape of Brittany's eyes. She feels as if her heart might break anew just from watching Brittany, even from afar.

Mr. Pierce holds his arm steady for his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth throws, all through the initial portion of his act, and, for a minute, Santana forgets that the performance poses Brittany any danger; it all seems a beautiful, terrible dance.

But then Mr. Pierce takes a stumbling step forward as he releases his next knife. He seems almost inebriated, or disoriented at least, his arm clumsy on the lob, his feet sprawled beneath him.

The audience screams before the blade even hits the board, and maybe Santana screams with them, though, if she does, she doesn't hear herself do it.

Brittany falls away from the backboard like a white comet plummeting through space, throwing herself down hard onto the ground. She skids across the dirt upon her knees and the butts of her palms, and the knife drives into the wood at her back, embedding just over the human figure drawing's heart all the way up to its hilt.

For a split second, the big top falls silent and Santana thinks _Oh God_, though she already sees Brittany unhurt, though shaken, upon the ground. Her heart beats so strongly she fears it might burst within her chest, and she very nearly runs from her hiding place into the ring, just to touch and feel Brittany alive.

Before Santana can move or speak or think another thought, the audience begins to boo, letting out a displeasured howl, cupping their hands around their mouths and shaking their fists, offended at Mr. Pierce's error. After their initial roar, some of the patrons begin to shout obscenities. Santana watches as Brittany flinches, even from her place on the floor, and feels an awful, cutting pang for it.

Santana Lopez ought not to love Brittany Pierce as anything more than a friend, but she does, and it all but harms Santana to see the hurt in Brittany's eyes as Brittany scrapes herself from the dirt, knees pinked and abraded and shoulders quaking from the rush.

Though Santana had hoped to fall out of love with Brittany by the time she went to sleep tonight, she knows that she won't—and maybe won't ever.

"I love...," she mumbles helplessly, still frozen at the back of the big top tent as she watches Will the Ringmaster run over to Brittany's side and help her to her feet while Brittany's father gapes at his own hands as if they've purposefully betrayed him.

The audience hurls more abuse toward the ring, and someone even tosses a green glass bottle down onto the stage floor from one of the middle rows on the bleachers. It shatters on the dirt, shards leaping here and there like sprightly fairies erupted from the heart of a magic spell. Liquid foams upon the earth, and Will roars at the audience to quiet down and retake their seats.

"I love...," Santana repeats again as Brittany makes her trembling bow.

* * *

><p>Santana wants more than anything to go to Brittany when the show ends. She wants to kiss Brittany's scraped knees and palms with flower-soft lips. She wants to mumble over and over again near Brittany's ear <em>I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry<em> until they both fall asleep together, breathing in the cool country air, wrapped together in darkness.

(Secret.)

Santana wants Brittany not to hurt or to feel alone or afraid. She wants no one to ever throw another knife at Brittany again. She just wants to go someplace safe for them. She wants to keep Brittany safe and not to trouble Brittany at all. She wishes she could tell Brittany exactly what she means: _lo siento, te adoro, I love you, perfect, brilliant girl_.

But Santana always wants those things that she will never, ever have the most.

(She really just wants Brittany.)

Santana wants for so much that she feels liable to break.

* * *

><p>When Puck asks Santana if she feels any better yet after the show, she tells him that she actually feels worse. When he asks her if she thinks that eating supper will help her feel better, she says that she doesn't. When he asks her what will help, she says she doesn't know.<p>

"Do you want me to send for Mrs. Evans?" Puck offers, a helpless look upon his face. "She'd probably know what to do."

When Santana laughs, it sounds sad, even to her. "I don't think she would," she says honestly.

"Do you want to go to bed, then?" Puck asks.

"Yes," Santana tells him. Then, "Enjoy your apple pie."

Puck leaves Santana at their tent, and she doesn't bother to watch him go before letting herself inside, exhausted body, mind, and heart. The tent has cooled considerably since the afternoon. Crickets cheep in the grass outdoors but scarcely anything makes noise beyond them. The night feels so still that Santana wonders if she couldn't hear the stars in their celestial orbits if she were to listen for them.

Santana sets down on the cot, sitting for a long while and running her toes through the grassy carpet she touches but cannot see underfoot. Her feet dangle from the bed, and she grips the cot frame with both hands, her shoulders curling forward as she tries to work out the tightness in her spine. Her hair hangs around her face, and she feels like she sometimes did as a child, waiting for her father climb the stairs and tuck her into bed.

For the first time since his funeral, Santana allows herself to freely miss her father and to wish that she could have him here to save her from her troubles the way he always did before. She misses his dark eyes and strong face and the way he listened to her stories with the utmost attention, as if she were an important businessman telling him about the Wall Street market and not just his little girl relating her and her grandmother's peaceful days about the bachelor cottage to him while he read through the daily post.

Briefly, Santana wonders if she could tell her father how she's fallen in love with Brittany if he were still alive and thinks to herself, ruefully, that if she did, it would be the first real conversation of import that she ever shared with him at all. Would he understand her heartbreak? Is a knife thrower's daughter quite like an angel? Would he have a San Juan song to teach his daughter all the secrets that she really ought to know?

For an instant, Santana imagines her father peering at her from over the top of his newspaper, leaned back in his chair in the parlor room, and offering her a sympathetic smile.

A drumming noise disturbs her thoughts—knuckles rapping upon canvas. The tent flaps balloon against the touch and a pretty voice calls out.

"Santana?"

(The prettiest voice.)

For a split second, Santana considers remaining silent and not answering Brittany, pretending to lie asleep on the bed, but then she remembers Brittany diving to the big top floor in a heap. She longs to see Brittany, if only just to check her wounds.

Santana answers, "I'm here."

And the tent doors open.

Santana can't see the waxing gibbous moon that lights the sky through the tent slat, but she can see its saffron light, illuminating Brittany against a backdrop of blackness and a roving sea of stars which seem to form a diadem behind Brittany's head. Brittany wears her tatty blue dress again, already changed from her circus costume. Her mouth hangs open in a curious _o_ and, she studies Santana through the darkness with fascination written in her features.

If Santana were in a better mood, she would make a joke about Brittany coming to visit her in Wonderland—_curiouser and curiouser_. As it is, Santana simply waits for Brittany to speak, not trusting herself to utter a word that won't betray her secret.

"Hey, darlin'," Brittany says, whispering as if she had caught Santana asleep. "How're you feeling?"

Santana grips the cot frame more tightly and attempts to still herself.

(When did she start shaking?)

She decides not to lie, "Not well."

Brittany takes a step forward into the tent, leaving the door flaps open at her back so as to allow the moonlight inside. She still wears her curious, searching expression and moves as slowly as she would if she were approaching a little bird that she didn't want to startle, lest it take wing. She stops just beyond the tent threshold.

"Have you had anything to eat today?" Brittany asks, still whispering. "You barely touched your lunch at all. Ma Jones made apple pie tonight. Would you like some?"

Santana's eyes well with tears, and her chest tightens. She wills herself not to cry.

(Why must Brittany be so sweet to her?)

She shrugs a single shoulder and looks at the ground, training her gaze to Brittany's shadow rather than to Brittany herself. "I'm not hungry," she mumbles, a lump rising in her throat.

(Why does this feel like a goodbye that only she knows about?)

"Santana," Brittany says, speaking just barely above her former whisper. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

Santana swings her feet through the grass, just to give herself something to do. She holds to her cot, still posed in the same position in which Brittany found her upon opening the tent flaps. Her whole chest feels like it will cave in at any moment. It wouldn't be so difficult to break away if Brittany weren't so absolutely perfect, Santana thinks desperately.

"Nothing," Santana chokes, hating how childish and small her voice sounds.

Brittany takes another step forward, lifting her hand toward Santana as if to gentle her, though maybe only to keep herself from crashing into anything in the dark. By now, shadows obscure Brittany's face so that Santana can only see the peripheries of it when she glances up from the grass, but, even through the darkness, Santana can perceive an unfamiliar expression etched into Brittany's features.

When Brittany draws to within a foot of Santana, she crouches down, almost taking a knee on the ground. For a second, it seems like she'll reach out to touch Santana, but then her hands find one another at her front and tangle together instead. When Brittany next speaks, her voice sounds different than it ever has before, with none of the usual just-so in it.

"Did I do something wrong?"

(Fear.)

The tremble in Brittany's question is enough to bring Santana to tears. Santana's chest aches as if someone cracked her breastbone in two with a miner's pick, and she rocks forward, still gripping tightly to the cot. Santana hadn't meant to scare Brittany, but she doesn't know how to stop. Anything she says to Brittany now—whether it be the truth or a lie—would only frighten Brittany more.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Santana sobs, allowing the rest to go unspoken.

"Do you want me to go?" Brittany asks.

(Santana startles to hear that her voice sounds tear-wet, too.)

Santana doesn't want Brittany to go. She just wants Brittany to stay here with her in the dark forever, where nothing—not Ken's shouting or Mr. Pierce's knives or the rules or the cards or the Devil or anything else—can reach them, but she knows that they can't and that they shouldn't, not when she loves Brittany and can't do anything for it. If Brittany knew Santana's secret, she wouldn't want to stay anywhere with Santana at all. A fresh ache pains Santana's chest.

"I—I don't know what I want," she says.

Brittany shudders in response and draws a hand to her own face, wiping her wrist against her tears. For a long while, Brittany doesn't speak but instead breathes fast and threadily through the darkness. It takes Brittany nearly a full minute to compose herself.

Finally, she says, "That's okay. You take as long as you need. I can wait."

Brittany wants Santana to say something to her, Santana knows, but Santana can't, not when her chest feels rent in two and her throat hurts as if she had swallowed the green glass shards that shattered across the big top floor at tonight's show. Her whole ribcage wracks with sobs, though she remains strangely and impressively quiet, only making little wet gasps. In the moment, Santana loves Brittany so much that she thinks she might actually die from it.

_I love you._

Santana doesn't speak a word.

Maybe a minute passes or maybe one-hundred years. The crickets outdoors chorus, and the moonlight shifts upon the grass. Brittany stares at Santana through the darkness, though they can't see one another's faces, and Santana looks away, still tracing Brittany's shadow over the ground, trying quickly to memorize its shape so that she can keep it with her later, once Brittany goes away, like one might memorize a passage from a favorite book.

Slowly, Brittany rises.

Without another word, she steps toward the tent flaps and lets herself out into the night. She gives Santana one last long look before closing the door between them.

And just like that, Santana knows that Brittany won't try to find her tomorrow.

And just like that, Santana knows that she can't stand to leave it that way.

Santana rises from her cot and rushes to the tent flaps before she can fully realize what she's doing. She barely bothers to open the door before her as she stumbles out into the moonlight, tripping over the canvas and the tangle of her own skirts. Her heart pounds somewhere up around her ears and she nearly falls flat on the ground in her haste, but she doesn't stop going until she catches sight of Brittany's shadow trailing along the tent row just ahead of her.

"I want you!" Santana blurts. "I just want you! I want you, and I don't know anything else!"

Santana's words sound desperate—like a plea—but Santana doesn't care if only by some grace Brittany will listen to her and stop and consent to always find Santana again. Santana can't say anything more or anything less, and she feels foolish and sorry and wishes with all her heart that Brittany will somehow forgive her.

She holds her breath and waits.

Brittany's shadow draws to a stop, and Brittany turns to face Santana, slowly and with great deliberateness.

To Santana's ceaseless surprise, Brittany offers her a smile—a real, genuine smile that reaches all the way to Brittany's eyes, though Brittany still wears saline tracks stained down her cheeks. Brittany gives a strangled, watery laugh, and when she does, she sounds strangely relieved. Her face breaks into a full grin the second her eyes meet Santana's.

"That's just fine, darlin'," she says, sweet and shaky. "I want what you want."

If Santana has ever felt happier, she can't remember the occasion or anything else, really; suddenly, all there is for her is Brittany. When Brittany laughs again, more tears fill Santana's eyes. She runs the three steps between them and catches Brittany in an embrace, throwing her arms around Brittany's neck and crashing their lips together, sobbing and laughing into their kiss at the same time.

Brittany stumbles under Santana's weight, but keeps them upright, wrapping her arms around Santana's waist and returning the kiss through her widest smile. Brittany's mouth feels warm and perfect, like coming home in one-thousand ways, and Santana kisses Brittany deeply, trying to paint all the sweetness, longing, fear, and dizziness she feels into Brittany's very quick with their every new nod and breath together.

The girls kiss fiercely and desperately, each one trying to say something that's gone unsaid all day.

Santana knows that the kiss won't answer their questions or tell their secrets for them, but it somehow feels like everything anyhow—like it's the only thing that really matters in the whole world, for the moment.

Brittany laughs into Santana's mouth and reaches up to brush tears from Santana's cheeks without pulling away. They sink deeper and deeper into each other, their bodies flush together, fires stoking low in their bellies. Brittany gives a little gasp, and Santana wonders if it's because she's surprised. Finally, they pull away from each other, breathless. Brittany holds Santana so tightly that Santana suspects they might melt into one person.

"Do you think we'll go to Hell?"

Santana surprises herself saying it, but Brittany doesn't seem surprised that Santana would ask her such a thing at all. Santana supposes that what she really means is Do _you think we'll ever be happy together?_, but Brittany seems to know that somehow in her deep, wise Brittany-way.

Brittany shakes her head and holds Santana closer. "I don't know anything about Hell," she says, the first hints of her cat-grin sneaking onto her face, "but it seems like everyone's going there for some reason or another."

"Sometimes I think you're the only person in the whole world who's not pretending to be someone you're not," Santana says suddenly.

Brittany considers Santana for a moment, really looking at her. Santana feels strange under her gaze with their faces still so close, though not uncomfortably so; it just isn't often that someone really, truly sees so much of you.

They stand in an almost-waltz position, though run up too closely against each other to have a proper dance, connected at the hips, with Santana poised on tiptoe, their torsos pressed together, Santana's breasts just above Brittany's, their ribcages elevated. When they breathe, their bellies rub together. Brittany holds Santana around the waist with one arm, and Santana still clings to her around the neck, just the same. Brittany's right hand clasps Santana's left, raised at their sides as if ready to lead them onto some open, moonlit dance floor.

If Santana wanted to do it, she could count every freckle over the bridge of Brittany's nose. As it is, she can make out each one of Brittany's honeyed eyelashes and the bob of Brittany's throat each time Brittany swallows or speaks. When Santana breathes, she feels her breath rebound from Brittany's face.

"Do you want some apple pie, darlin'?" Brittany says finally in her just-so way.

It's not what Santana expected to hear from Brittany at all.

(Will Brittany always surprise her like this?)

"Yeah," Santana says in her smallest, little voice and falls back onto flat feet, smiling as Brittany reaches immediately to twine their pinky fingers together.

And just like that, everything seems strangely simple again just because Brittany makes it wonderfully, easily so.

* * *

><p>They walk to the mess pit, fingers linked, and Santana swings their hands between them, just because she can. Brittany still doesn't know Santana's secret, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter as much that she doesn't know it, at least for the moment.<p>

The fact is that Brittany likes them the way they are—and since Santana has always loved Brittany for as long as they've known each other, them-as-they-are includes Santana's love, which is something, for a start.

Santana hums, content, as they make their way down the tent row. Strange how she could feel so hopeless just a moment ago, when now she feels a simple ease, just being with Brittany. Though she still regrets acting so rashly today and yesterday, she supposes that she'll be all right for now.

Brittany wants what she wants—the phrase repeats again and again in her mind, like a promise or one of her grandmother's rosary prayers.

Santana knows that Brittany can't return her love, not in the same way that she feels it, but somehow she doesn't feel lonely anymore—not when Brittany just wants to spend time with her and treats her so well. Even if Brittany doesn't love Santana, she likes Santana heaps, more than Puck likes Finn or Sam, and in a different way than one would expect a friend to like a friend.

Brittany Pierce likes Santana Lopez without rules or reason, and somehow that notion comforts Santana and makes a home within her bones.

Whereas before Santana thought it impossible, now Santana supposes that she can love Brittany without causing Brittany harm. Vaguely, she wonders if some part of Brittany doesn't already know her secret. Vaguely, she wonders if it would matter if Brittany did.

(Fireflies flicker around every corner Brittany and Santana take.)

"If you two loons think you can sneak dessert without eating my supper, you've got another thing coming to you!" Ma Jones chides the girls as they arrive at the mess pit, waving her wooden spoon at them as if they were pesky bugs she hankers to swat.

Brittany smirks. "But Santana isn't feeling well, and I'm pretty sure apple pie is the only thing that will make her feel better—doctor's orders," she says cheekily.

Ma couldn't roll her eyes more theatrically at Brittany and Santana if she were to take lessons from Rachel as to how to do it. All the same, she doesn't stop them from heading to the table for sweets after Brittany stakes their claim.

(Santana can't be certain, but she thinks she catches Ma eyeing the tearstains on their cheeks as they walk away from her.)

Brittany cuts a single slice of pie for the both herself and Santana, though she does so ungracefully, the crust fissuring under her knife and splitting to reveal the filling. Brittany pries the pie up from its pan by the flat of the knife blade and slides it onto the plate that Santana holds for her, first in one pile, then in another, smiling guiltily the whole time.

"Sorry I wrecked it," she says quickly, shaking a last sticky apple slice free from her blade, and Santana's heart all but melts for her.

"You didn't wreck it," Santana assures her. "It will still taste the same."

Brittany's ears turn pink, and she bites her lip. She shoots Santana a grateful, adoring glance as she scrapes the knife flat against the pie pan's lip to clean it. "Thank you," she says simply, and Santana knows the feeling.

(She knows, she knows, she knows.)

With so few people left in the mess pit, the girls take the opportunity to sit at one of the benches along the kitchen table, their hips pressed together and feet confused beneath them in the grass. Ma and her girls flutter here and there clearing empty dishes away from the spread, stopping intermittently to watch Sam and Blaine, who clown along the peripheries of the mess area, turning awkward somersaults and swatting at each other as Sam tries to steal Blaine's trilby hat and Blaine continually kicks at Sam's behind.

Ma wears a soft expression as she scrubs a single dish again and again with a rag, though it were already dried. She watches Sam and looks faraway and up close all at once.

(And Santana knows how she feels perfectly.)

(She knows, she knows, she knows.)

(Brittany nudges Santana's ankle under the table and grins at her like it's Christmas.)

The girls trade a single fork back and forth between them, Santana taking a bite and then Brittany. Santana had never eaten an American apple pie before tonight, but finds that she likes its familiar cinnamon—her grandmother's favorite dessert spice—and tart and sweet flavor. Crumbs gather at the corners of Brittany's mouth while she eats, and Santana has to check herself to keep from kissing them away.

"Have the last bite, darlin'," Brittany offers, and Santana rolls her eyes because Brittany is too perfect.

"You're not fair, Britt," she says simply.

And Brittany couldn't be more pleased with herself if she had solved Mr. Adams' money problems without him having to sell the circus. For a second, Brittany's eyes turn fervent and soft, the way they usually do before she kisses Santana breathless.

(What is it that Santana's forgotten?)

(She strokes the thread ring tied around her finger, absentminded.)

Just then, Brittany jerks back, livening in an instant. "Look, a falling star!" she exclaims, pointing just over Santana's shoulder. "Quick, darlin', make a wish!"

Santana cranes her neck just in time to see a ray of white dart across the sky, brilliant and searing as it cuts its trail toward the earth. Her heart swoops. She closes her eyes and holds her breath.

_I wish for Brittany to love me back._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I would like to offer my special thanks to Lulu at ididntmeanyou on tumblr for helping me work out the Spanish translations in this chapter. Her help proved invaluable and she's basically awesomesauce.<strong>

**Also, as always, I want to thank my beta Han at socallmedaisy on tumblr who is basically the most amazing person ever. She rocks my socks in every way, as does her story, i80w, which you should all read. #brotp: with the u and everything**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**Lo más pronto que te olvides de la justícia, lo más felíz serás : The faster you forget about fairness, the happier you'll be**_

_**"¿Alguna vez eschuchas? ¡No me hables, bocona!" : "Do you ever listen? Don't talk to me, blabber-mouth!"**_

_**Oh Diablo que me sigues, ¡ayúdeme ahora! : Oh Devil who follows me, help me now!**_

_**precoz : precocious**_

_**(Ate una hebra de hilo alrededor de tu dedo para que recuerdes) : (Tie a piece of thread around your finger to remind you)**_

_**lo siento, te adoro : I'm sorry, I adore you**_


	9. The Best Day

**Chapter 8: The Best Day**

**Saturday, July 2nd, 1898: Onawa, Iowa**

The red is what pulls her from her sleep—red like a wall of flames behind her eyes, though she should still swim in an even black sea. It's too light outside. It's never light outside when she wakes. Suddenly, she jerks as if pricked by a pin.

"Oh God!" Santana gasps, pushing up off the cot, hair sweat-plastered to her face and whole body unbearably warm. "We missed the train!"

When Santana looks for Puck, she finds him standing beside the steel wash basin, chuckling at her. For the first time since he met Santana at the depot in Omaha one week ago, Puck wears work clothes rather than his gypsy costume. Soap lather coats his chin, and the rest of his face appears recently washed and mostly shaven. He holds a razor an inch away from his right cheek and sports his devilish smirk. Bright summer daylight pours into the tent through the open door behind him. It must be at least six or seven o'clock in the morning already.

"Don't pitch a fit, ladybird," Puck says calmly, resuming his shaving. "Today's a down day—there ain't no train to catch."

"Down day?" Santana repeats stupidly, peeling herself up from the cot and brushing the hair from her eyes.

"Yup," Puck says. "Every Saturday's a down day at the circus. It means we stay in town, don't take the train, do chores around camp, rest, and don't put on any shows. Sadly, Ken roped me into fixing a bum wagon axel on my down day 'cause he can't trust Finn to do it by himself, but you ought to enjoy yourself—make the most of your free time."

"Free time?" Santana repeats again.

Puck rolls his eyes at her. "You sure you're not still snoozing, ladybird?" he teases. "You know: free time. It means you can do whatever you like for the next few hours, as long as Ma Jones and Theresa Schuester don't need you for anything. You best make the most of it. I'd suggest you start with getting yourself some breakfast before Ma locks the kitchen up tight."

Puck finishes his shaving job in a few sure strokes and wipes his face across his sleeve, drying it. He cleans his razor on his handkerchief—Santana wonders if it's the only towel he owns—and runs his palm over his mouth, checking for stray lather. Finding none, he picks up his little clear aftershave bottle from atop the overturned vegetable crate and distributes a drop of it between his palms, rubbing it against his cheeks, wincing at the burn. The strong, aseptic scent of alcohol and menthol fills the tent. After Puck replaces the stopper on the bottle, he reaches for his hat, perched on the stool in the corner, and sets it on his head.

"I'll see you at lunchtime, ladybird," he says surely before heading out the door.

Santana sits upright on the cot and straightens her skirt.

"Hey, darlin'!"

Santana jumps at the sound of Brittany's voice and a titter of nerves runs through her before she remembers that she and Brittany parted ways on good terms last night—that Brittany returned her kiss by the tents, that they shared apple pie at the mess pit together, making a wish on a shooting star before they went to sleep—and a new sort of excitement fills her.

Brittany appears between the tent flaps, carrying a breakfast dish in one hand and an aluminum cup in her other, looking lively and just as pleased as can be to find Santana awake and sitting up on her cot.

"I brought breakfast," Brittany says cheerfully, ducking inside the tent. "Do you mind if I sit down with you?"

Santana spent all last night considering Brittany and their situation, or at least she did for as long as she could before she fell to sleep, more exhausted than she had ever felt before in her life. Though Santana still feels as though something eludes her—what is it she can't seem to remember for her life?—she also feels at peace, loving Brittany quietly while Brittany showers her with friendship.

She's decided upon some new rules for herself—mainly that she mustn't kiss Brittany as fiercely as she might like to do—but, beyond that, she doesn't intend to change the way that she and Brittany keep each other's company or to question her love for Brittany anymore in itself.

The fact is that for whatever the reason, Santana Lopez loves Brittany Pierce, and perhaps she always will. Her love for Brittany seems somehow inevitable, never mind what it means, and especially not when Brittany brings her hotcakes and coffee in bed.

"Please," Santana says, scooting over a bit on the cot to make room for Brittany beside her, taking the aluminum cup from Brittany to afford Brittany an open hand.

The instant Brittany sits, Santana breathes her in, and Santana's body tunes to Brittany, like an orchestra finding the first note to a symphony. Beneath the salt-sweet eggs and the molten, earthy coffee waft, Brittany smells like summer wind, sunburned skin, apple, and that inimitable Brittany some-such that livens Santana in an instant. The girls' knees bump together, and the cot dips beneath their combined weights.

Brittany steadies the breakfast plate on her lap but then furrows her brow at it, apparently noticing something amiss.

"I forgot to get two forks," Brittany apologizes, scrunching up her nose. "Is it all right if we share?"

_I love you._

Today, it doesn't feel like a tragedy to think it. Today, it feels more like a confidence.

Santana smiles, nodding, and nudges Brittany's ankle with her toes under the bed. "Of course," she says brightly, liking the simple thought of sharing anything with Brittany.

Brittany takes up the lone fork and cuts a piece from the hotcake, mopping it through the maple syrup pooling along the edge of the dish, offering it up to Santana, skewered on the tines. She fixes Santana with a very serious look and nods her head, inviting Santana to open up her mouth.

When Santana agreed to share the fork with Brittany, she hadn't exactly imagined that Brittany would feed her.

Santana laughs. "Britt, what are you doing?" she asks, recoiling slightly from Brittany's silliness.

Brittany shrugs, "Feeding you breakfast, darlin'."

Santana would roll her eyes if Brittany weren't so impossibly perfect. She waits for Brittany to relent. When Brittany doesn't, Santana rolls her eyes in earnest.

"You're serious?" she asks, surprised to hear herself speaking in her small, just-for-Brittany voice so early in the day already. Brittany just nods, and, though Santana's cheeks heat, she opens up her mouth and allows Brittany to feed her.

Brittany is surpassingly gentle; once she pilots the fork into Santana's mouth, she waits for Santana to close her lips around it, and then softly retracts it, smiling all the while. As Santana chews, Brittany cuts a bite of hotcake for herself.

A strange delicacy attends the meal as Brittany trades between feeding Santana and herself, always with the same carefulness and attention. Santana knows she oughtn't to allow Brittany's actions to affect her so, but she can't help but lose herself every time Brittany's eyes meet hers, caught up in unpaintable, inimitable blue. Her tongue curls around the fork tines, and the food somehow tastes sweeter just for Brittany's touch.

Santana has no idea how much time passes as she and Brittany share their meal; she feels lost in Mr. Malory's fairy country, where minutes and hours and days mean nothing. Her heart beats to a steady Brittany, Brittany, Brittany cadence, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between sharing bites and sharing kisses. The same stoked sensation Santana sometimes gets from kissing Brittany flares, low but unmistakable, in Santana's quick. She feels as tuned and playable as the string on a violin.

When Brittany raises a last taste of eggs to Santana's mouth—salty and with crisped, brown edges, thin and breakable upon Santana's tongue—her knuckle brushes over Santana's cheek, and Santana feels it stick.

"You've got some syrup," Santana mumbles once she swallows.

Brittany sets the fork down on the cleaned plate, staring at Santana with a deep, fervent interest. "Oh," she says simply and draws her hand shamelessly to her mouth to clean it.

Santana knows she should try not to stare, but she can't help herself. The sight of Brittany drawing her knuckle into her mouth and licking the syrup from it fascinates her in a deep and relentless sort of way. She gapes at Brittany moving in the same way she would gapes at a new circus act and licks her own lips, helpless.

(Her resolve to not kiss Brittany as fiercely as she might like to do weakens considerably.)

Brittany seems to notice.

Something lights behind Brittany's eyes—a wild, vivid interest.

With a kind of supplicating devotion, Brittany lifts her hand to Santana's cheek. Her thumb brushes over the round of Santana's face. Though her touch feels soft, it also stokes the smolder in Santana's belly, building it. Santana holds her breath as Brittany's knuckle paints over her skin to her mouth, breathing in the syrupy sweetness on Brittany's skin, laced over that matchless Brittany-smell.

At first, Santana only kisses Brittany's knuckles, barely allowing her lips to ghost over Brittany's skin at all, but then Brittany's breath catches, and Brittany slips her knuckle past Santana's lips. After that, Santana can't stop herself, though she might die from doing it: she sucks on Brittany's finger, tasting saccharine and sweat and Brittany, running her tongue over Brittany's joint and along her fingertip, taking her time to trace Brittany over.

(She sinks into the sensation as a hummingbird into the hot heart of a flower, seeking for the honey nectar by touch and taste and quick-beating heart.)

When she opens her eyes, she finds Brittany staring at her, mouth ajar.

Both girls breathe heavily, and Santana releases Brittany's finger from between her lips with a little pop, giving Brittany's knuckles one last kiss. Brittany stares at Santana like Santana is something brand new, and suddenly Santana floods with shame, her whole body heating. She looks away from Brittany, uncertain how to explain this glowing, low longing in her without saying the word love.

"T-thank you for breakfast," she stammers.

"No problem," Brittany says.

(Her voice sounds strangely rough and ragged.)

Both girls shuffle on the cot, and Santana stands—a wave of dizziness washing over her—walking over to the steel basin to wash her face between her hands. Though she can't see Brittany, she feels Brittany's gaze on her the whole time she scrubs her cheeks and cleans her teeth; Brittany's attention burns warmer than the daylight.

"How do you want to spend our down day?" Santana asks, reaching for something that she and Brittany can do together that won't result in her pinning Brittany down to the cot with desperate kisses, breaking all her own new rules before she's even allowed them to take effect.

"Do you want to come to town with me?" Brittany asks, her voice returned to its normal pitch. "I've got a penny in my pocket, and I want to spend it."

Santana didn't realize that circus folk were at liberty to leave the camp as they listed, even on down days. She would go anywhere with Brittany, though, and town seems like as good a destination as any, particularly if Brittany has errands to attend there.

"I'd love to," Santana says truthfully. "Let me grab my shoes."

She can already tell that today will go much better than yesterday.

* * *

><p>They really should have counted on something stopping them from going, whether it were a sudden chore assignment, or, as it turns out, Rachel Berry, who appears behind them as soon as they deposit their breakfast dishes back at the mess pit, like a tiny, talkative act of God, dead set on discerning their intentions for the day, and, apparently, making the world's biggest nuisance of herself, for all her chatter.<p>

Though Santana had felt fond of Rachel last night after Rachel tended her so well during the evening show, today Santana feels nothing but annoyed with Rachel, and Brittany seems to share Santana's sentiment.

"Where do you two think you're going? You're not leaving, are you?" Rachel asks for the third time as Brittany and Santana turn down another alley in the white city. She must take two steps to Brittany and Santana's every one to catch up with them from behind.

Today, Rachel dons a work dress and apron. She actually resembles a child or a baby doll more than a gypsy or the famous Little Malibran of Seville, with too much lace around her collar, frilly pantalettes that run down to her ankles, and her hair done up in girlish pigtails. It's strange seeing her not in her show clothing; Santana had hardly realized how small Rachel was until now.

Santana grips Brittany's pinky finger tightly in hers. "To town," she says, a snap in her voice.

Rachel furrows her brow, disapproving. "Why do you want to go to town?" she asks, putting in another huge stride in an attempt to overtake Brittany and Santana, perhaps to stop them.

"We're going to run away and join the gillies," Brittany says, wearing her blank joking face, though her teasing somehow sounds less mirthful than usual. Her voice strains, tight like a pulled string.

(Santana has seldom seen Brittany annoyed before; it's possibly the most adorable thing in the great, wide world, though.)

When Rachel's face blanks with confusion, Brittany adds, "We want to become greengrocers."

Santana smirks. "Or farmers," she says pertly.

Now it's Rachel's turn to look annoyed. She tut-tuts Santana. "Don't you think you really ought to bring your husband with you to town, Santana? It's unseemly for a lady to walk about in a strange place with no one to watch out for her," she says briskly.

"I'll watch out for Santana," Brittany defends. "And she'll watch out for me. We don't need Puck."

(A thrill passes through Santana.)

(She strokes the thread ring around her finger, absentminded.)

"And Puck told me to spend my day how I like," Santana adds. "And this is how I like—to go to town with Brittany."

By now, Rachel has managed to flank Brittany and Santana, and she appears absolutely flabbergasted at what they have to say. She opens her mouth and then closes it again, affronted.

"So you're just going to go to town by yourselves?" she asks, her voice much smaller than it was a second ago.

"Yes," Brittany says plainly, as though Rachel is screwy for asking.

Rachel considers Brittany's answer for a moment. She glances between Brittany and Santana, her gaze lingering at their clasped pinky fingers before returning to their faces. She still keeps pace with them, half-jogging over the prairie grass as they approach the road.

"May I come with you?" she asks.

Santana groans internally; she doesn't see a way to politely decline Rachel's request, though she very much wants to do so. Why must Rachel make such a pest of herself? All Santana wants to do is have an adventure with Brittany—_alone_.

Luckily, Brittany intervenes.

"But Rachel, you can't speak Spanish," she says in her most matter-of-fact voice.

If Brittany's non sequitur confuses Santana—which it does—it seems to confuse Rachel even more so. Rachel looks at Brittany as though Brittany is mad; Santana just waits to hear what more of Brittany has to say, interested to discern what must be another one of Brittany's brilliant, backtalk games.

"No," Rachel admits. "I can't speak Spanish, but what does that—?"

Brittany cuts her off, "Rachel, you're the Little Malibran of Seville!"

"Yes, I am," Rachel agrees. "But, Brittany, I don't see what that has to do with—"

"You're very famous," Brittany interrupts.

Now Rachel seems both thoroughly bemused and bothered. "Yes," she agrees again. "Brittany, as much as it flatters me that you've memorized my stage billing, I really don't see the point in you telling me things I already know about myself. Why should any of that matter?"

Brittany wears a very even, thoughtful expression. "Because the people in Onawa know you by your stage persona," she says simply. "Rachel, if you come to town with us, you'll ruin the circus magic! People will figure out that you don't speak Spanish. Everyone will hear word of it. They'll probably write to the Queen of Spain and put articles in all the major newspapers. It'll ruin Mr. Adams! You have to stay here."

It's hard to say whether Brittany's logic impresses Rachel or flummoxes her. In either case, Rachel's mouth falls open, and she slows her pace at Santana's side.

"But what about Santana?" Rachel asks stupidly.

Brittany fixes Rachel with a truly sympathetic look. "Santana speaks Spanish," she says, as if this fact explains everything.

_"Sí, sí, sí,"_ Santana confirms, not even attempting to hide her giggles. _"Lo siento, Rachel, pero Brittany dice la verdad. Excepto que, realmente, no lo siento."_

Rachel halts in her tracks.

(She couldn't look more bewildered if Brittany and Santana were to sprout wings and fly away from her.)

* * *

><p>The truth is that Brittany will never cease to surprise Santana.<p>

"How did you know I speak Spanish?" Santana asks once they make it far enough away from Rachel that she won't overhear them. Santana raises an eyebrow, curious to know Brittany's response.

"What?" Brittany says, still blank-faced, as if something distracts her.

Santana repeats herself: "How did you know I speak Spanish? I've probably only said a few words of Spanish in front of you before, and I didn't tell you they were Spanish words. You've never even seen my act on the midway."

Brittany glances away from Santana but not quickly enough to hide the furious pink blush that rises to her ears and cheeks. She wears a funny, pinched smile, like she has a happy secret she wants to suppress. After several long seconds of silence, she eventually relents.

"On the first day we met, you said that you and Abuela lived in a cottage in a park," Brittany mumbles. "I didn't know who Abuela was, so I asked Puck. He said that's what you call your grandmother. When I asked him why you didn't just call her your grandmother, he said it's because you speak Spanish, like a real gypsy."

"You remembered that I said that?"

Santana's voice sounds so, so small, even to her own ears.

(Her chest suddenly feels very tight, and her heart squeezes for the new pressure.)

Brittany spares Santana a glance, looking at her in that sort of all-seeing way. "Of course, I did, darlin'," she says seriously. For a second, she hesitates, teasing her bottom lip between her teeth, then she adds quickly, "What you said back there to Rachel sounded really pretty."

(Now Santana is the one to blush.)

"What I said was mean," Santana mutters, more to remind herself than to inform Brittany. She stares at her own toes.

Brittany shrugs and gives Santana's pinky finger a sympathetic squeeze. "If you really wanted to say something mean to Rachel, you would have said it in words she could understand. You just don't like it when people get too close to your secret things, that's all," she says simply.

(Santana knows that Brittany's assurance shouldn't make her feel better, but it does.)

Santana bites her lips into her mouth and swings her and Brittany's hands between them.

"I guess."

By now the girls have reached the dirt road leading from the circus grounds back into town. Since she didn't pay any attention to it during yesterday's morning parade, Santana doesn't know the road's length, but it seems to her that a great distance exists between the campsite and the Onawa township proper.

Tall trees with two-faced leaves—green on one side and silver-green on the other—shiver in the wind, and birds dart overhead where great white clouds drift through the sky like barges upon a lazy river, casting shadows across the ground as they go. A patchwork of green, red, yellow, and white grass grows like stubble upon the earth's cheeks, with purple and yellow flowers sprouting up like freckles. There are more hills here than Santana has ever encountered before in her life.

The whole earth seems to buzz with electric energy, cicadas making their percussion in the weeds and wind shushing against the grasses. It doesn't feel as hot today as it did yesterday, but everything in nature still seems lively and fat with summer. Though Santana often spent time in the garden when she lived at the bachelor cottage in New York, she had never seen so many green things running over until she started traveling with the circus.

For the first time since last Tuesday, Santana dons her shoes, which is something she thought might make the going into town easier for her. Unfortunately, the shoes don't help her much at all, as her feet seem to have grown unused to footwear. Her toes pinch, and her ankles rub against the leather. Santana glances at Brittany, still barefoot despite the rocks along the road, and wonders if Brittany didn't have a better idea than she did.

For a second, Santana allows herself to carry away thinking about how clever Brittany is, even though Brittany plays daffy with most people.

When Santana looks up from Brittany's feet, she finds Brittany staring at her. Their eyes meet, and Brittany draws a deep breath, as one would when preparing to plunge underwater.

"Are we all right today, darlin'?" Brittany asks.

Santana starts.

It isn't an accusation, for Brittany sounds as placid and straightforward as ever and wears a waiting face, her mouth open but not smiling, her expression not unlike the one she wore when she and Santana first met.

Of course, Santana knows why Brittany feels the need to ask, given how strangely Santana behaved yesterday—Santana just hadn't expected it is all.

Brittany seems to recognize Santana's shock and backpedals. "I mean, do you want to tell me what happened yesterday? Because you seemed really spooked, and I didn't ever mean to scare you. If I did scare you, I want to know how I scared you so that I don't do it again," she explains.

Santana shakes her head, both to assure Brittany that she didn't do anything wrong and to clear her own cobwebs.

"You didn't scare me," Santana says quickly because it's true.

(Brittany didn't do anything to frighten Santana. Santana did that well enough all by herself.)

Momentarily, Santana considers telling Brittany the truth and having done with it, but after scanning Brittany's face, her courage fails. Today has started out so perfectly, and Santana doesn't want to ruin it, saying such a big thing without planning for the moment. Santana settles on an answer that stops short from confessing her love to Brittany Pierce along the dirt road into Onawa.

"I just haven't ever had a friend before, and sometimes I wonder how you can even like me," Santana admits, as honest as she can be, for the moment.

"I've never liked anyone as much as I like you," Brittany says fervently.

(For the briefest instant, Santana wonders if wishes can come true.)

(Brittany's eyes seem so, so blue.)

Suddenly, Santana feels almost giddy, like someone poured happiness into her like coffee into a cup. She couldn't keep from grinning if she tried. She skips a step without meaning to.

"I've never l—liked anyone as much as I like you, either," Santana agrees, cheeks heating. Her whole stomach turns over when Brittany gives her pinky finger a trusting squeeze.

"I'm really glad you joined the circus," Brittany says sweetly as she and Santana finally happen upon the town.

"I am, too," Santana whispers.

(It surprises her to realize that she really means it.)

* * *

><p>Despite the early hour, Brittany and Santana find the streets of Onawa bustling. Carts, buggies, horses, and pedestrians move every which way around them. Children shout and roll hoops down the sidewalks with sticks, and women carry crying infants on their hips as they move from door to door along their errands. Workmen hang from ladders overlooking storefronts, and shop boys deliver baskets to this and that front stoop. Everything seems in a flutter and Santana feels a thrill, experiencing it all with Brittany.<p>

The girls pass a sign as they enter the downtown: ONAWA, IOWA—WIDEST MAIN STREET, USA.

Santana reads it aloud to Brittany, and Brittany wags her eyebrows at it.

"Is that so?" she says slyly, using her silly proper voice.

"That's very impressive," Santana smirks, wondering vaguely how the street in question compares to Park Avenue back home in New York City.

"Highly," Brittany agrees.

A man passing Brittany and Santana on horseback shoots the girls an offended look, and Santana feels guilty for making fun at the town's expense for about a half-second until she glances over to find Brittany grinning at her like a goon. The instant their eyes meet, both Santana and Brittany laugh.

"Main streets are very serious business, Britt," Santana admonishes through her giggles.

Brittany hums, pleased. "I'll try to remember that from now on," she replies solemnly.

Neither she nor Santana stops laughing until they reach the general store.

* * *

><p>It's hard to say which one of them affronts the shopkeeper more: the yeller girl in full gypsy dress or the not-yeller girl with no shoes and no qualms about speaking in a very loud voice inside a public place.<p>

In reality, it's both of them together, isn't it?

The shopkeeper continually glances at their linked fingers, shaking his head and scrubbing his countertop far too intently with his washrag while they move about his store.

When Santana visited the general store in St. James with Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester, they perused the herbs, vegetables, raw ingredients, and cutlery, ignoring the candy entirely, but today Brittany leads Santana directly to the section of store designated as SWEETMEATS.

Under the sign, the girls discover just over one half-dozen barrels, which brim with colorful confections that glint in jewel tones, attractive, under the electric lights. Each barrel bears a label: LEMON DROPS, HOARHOUNDS, PEANUTS, WINTERGREEN MINTS, PEPPERMINT DROPS, ROCK CANDY, etc.

"Do you want to share a sweet kiss, darlin'?"

(Santana nearly chokes on her own breath until she sees that Brittany stands before a barrel of chocolate-dipped dried meringues labeled as such.)

While the prospect of eating candy mostly amuses Santana—she hasn't indulged in sweets except on very special occasions, such as holidays, for a few years now, at her grandmother's discretion—it seems to thrill Brittany, who speaks with such great excitement that she all but shouts across the store. Brittany moves in front of another barrel, eyeing its contents with a kind of thoughtful enthusiasm.

"If we got one of these, it would last a long time," she says loudly, and Santana flanks her to read the barrel label.

CANDY THIN STICKS.

Each piece of candy in the barrel resembles a new pencil in length and thinness but looks like a pretty piece of colored glass otherwise. Amongst the lot, Santana spies green sticks with pink and brown stripes swirled over them like ribbons, sticks of bold ruby red, white and red peppermint sticks, and yellow sticks with brown and white pinstripes. Brittany nearly bounces up and down at Santana's side, rocking upon her toes and then back onto flat feet.

(Santana doesn't think there could be anyone more adorable than Brittany Pierce in the entire world.)

"If you're sure you want to spend your penny, you should get it," Santana says earnestly. "You don't have to share anything with me, though—I'm just happy to come along with you."

Brittany pouts out her lip as if Santana has said something positively tragic but also looks at Santana with soft, adoring eyes. Her attention causes Santana's heart to beat faster, and Santana's cheeks to heat again for what seems like the hundredth time since Brittany first appeared inside her tent this morning.

"What?" Santana says helplessly, a stupid smile spread out upon her face.

To Santana's vast surprise, Brittany doesn't answer immediately. Instead, her cheeks and ears blush brilliant pink, and she looks away, casting her gaze back to the treasure trove of candy in the barrel. Brittany rocks onto her toes again and then stands down, brushing her hair away from her face, wanting for something to do with her hands. She steals a guilty glance at Santana.

"Nothing, darlin'," she says sweetly.

(Strange how much _nothing_ can sound like _everything_ sometimes.)

(Santana's heart beats on bird's wings, fast and high, almost ready to take flight.)

"I want to share with you," Brittany says, as if she means to settle the matter. She finally meets Santana's eyes again, though she still sports her blush. "Will you let me?"

(Santana doesn't think there could be anyone more perfect than Brittany Pierce in the entire world.)

* * *

><p>After paying for a yellow-and-brown candy thin stick at the counter—the shopkeeper refuses to acknowledge Santana's presence throughout the transaction and speaks to Brittany very curtly, despite the fact that she's a paying customer—Brittany and Santana exit the general store and take to the promenade outside, trading licks back and forth from their purchase.<p>

(Brittany identifies the candy's flavor as rum punch, though it just tastes like sweet, mulled spices to Santana.)

They seat themselves on the top rail of the porch fence a ways down the promenade from the general store, their feet kicking against the balusters and their backs to the street as they watch people pass by them. They savor their treat, knocking their ankles together to keep each other's attention—not that they need much help with that.

(They stare and stare again.)

A quiet but unmistakable energy hums between them, and each time their hands brush passing the candy to each other, Santana feels a thrill that passes from her heart all the way through her body. Today, Santana knows what to call that thrill, though she didn't two days ago.

(The funny thing is that Brittany seems to feel a thrill, too.)

(She shivers at Santana's touch and seems to linger, waiting—)

"Thank you," Santana says suddenly, indicating the candy stick she holds between her fingers. "It's very kind of you to share."

Brittany shrugs. "You're welcome, darlin'," she says politely. "Daddy gave me that penny to spend from my last paycheck before the one that Mr. Adams handed out yesterday, and I didn't know what to do with it for the longest time until today."

The idea that Brittany waited to spend her salary until she could spend it on Santana causes Santana to all but melt with adoration for Brittany, sweeter and stickier than the candy. Santana very nearly allows her thoughts to run wild.

(Can wishes ever come true? Santana begins to wonder, if—)

(No, she mustn't.)

She swirls her tongue over the candy, just to give herself something to do that doesn't involve either kissing Brittany or saying something too big for the moment. The stick has begun to file down to a point after all the licking and Santana's tongue feels sloppy from it. She tastes spice and sugar but just the faintest hint of Brittany's mouth underneath that from where Brittany licked the candy, too. Brittany watches Santana taste the candy stick from the corner of her eye. The stoked feeling purrs low in Santana's belly.

"Miss Santana, will you take a stroll with me?" Brittany asks in her silly, proper accent.

(How can one person be all the kinds of wonderful there are in the world?)

"Why, of course, Miss Brittany," Santana grins.

Brittany extends her elbow to Santana, as prim as a gentleman in one of Mr. Hardy's novels, and Santana links her arm through it, so pleased that she feels goofy for it. Once Santana accepts Brittany's arm, both she and Brittany stand up from the top rail and adjust their skirts. Santana passes Brittany the candy stick, and Brittany plugs it in her mouth like a tobacco pipe.

"Shall we?" Brittany slurs around the candy, indicating the full run of the promenade, and the girls start off, stride in stride, their hips bumping together, and neither one of them minding it.

Going along, Santana must suppose that Onawa, Iowa isn't so different from other towns in the American Midwest. However, since Santana has visited only a handful of towns in her whole life outside of the New York boroughs—mainly just Omaha and St. James, really—Onawa rather impresses her for its vitality and intricacy.

As Santana and Brittany stroll along the promenade, linked at their elbows, they pass a drug store with all manner of colorful cure-alls and tonics advertised in the window and stocked in pretty rainbow bottles, a well-kempt hotel with white shutters and a green door, a little doctor's clinic, and a store that only sells farm equipment, taking their time to look in all the windows and comment on what people and merchandise they can see. At the end of the promenade, they arrive at a shop with a sign above its awning that reads HABERDASHERY, though it seems to sell all kinds of clothing and not just suits for men.

The display in the window stops Brittany and Santana in their tracks: a near mountain of hats cascade over one another, some unadorned and sensible, such as the boaters and Boss of the Plains hats not dissimilar to the one Puck wears, and others ostentatious, with feathers, veils, and chiffon flowers, quite like the foppish headgear that Santana's grandmother always called vulgar in her day.

Santana hears Brittany gasp as she presses up to the window.

"Look at that one!" Brittany says in her too-loud, excited voice, pointing to a particularly egregious garden ensemble, complete with a false bouquet on the brim and a wooden robin nested along the ribbon at the cap. Brittany sounds almost reverent about it.

It has to be the second ugliest hat Santana has ever seen.

A smile curls Santana's lips.

"So you like funny hats, do you?" she observes, more pleased than she can say to learn something new about Brittany.

(Even though she knew that Brittany liked one funny hat at the circus, it somehow delights Santana to realize that Brittany likes funny hats on a whole.)

Brittany flushes slightly and shrugs. "I like them because they're a mystery," she says, as artless and matter-of-fact as always.

"Oh?"

Santana quirks an eyebrow.

Though Brittany apes bashful at first, she doesn't stay that way for long. When next Brittany speaks, she does so all in a rush, "Don't you wonder who made that thing and why and if anyone will ever buy it?" she says, looking through the window at the funny hat in question, near-reverence written upon her face and an excited hush in her voice.

"I'd buy it for you," Santana says automatically.

Now it's her turn to blush.

Brittany fixes Santana with that same soft, admiring look she wore inside the general store, and, for a second, Santana wonders if Brittany doesn't want to kiss her. They don't kiss, of course—not with so many people around—but Santana feels her heart tug as if they do all the same. What she doesn't tell Brittany is that if she had money, she would buy anything and everything in the world that Brittany wanted, even if it turned out that Brittany wanted one-hundred funny hats, all in different colors.

"Do you want the last bite of the candy?" Brittany asks, extending the end of the stick to Santana.

Santana shakes her head. "You can have it," she says.

Brittany hums happily as she crunches the candy between her teeth and turns her back on the window, resting up against the storefront. In that instant, she looks so pretty that Santana wishes that someone would paint her or take her photograph.

(Of course, nothing but _original Brittany_ will ever cast such a perfect spell.)

A pair of well-dressed businessmen needle past Brittany and Santana on the promenade.

"—said they'd arrive on the 11:07 train," says the one.

"Is that so?" jaws his companion, chomping on a pipe.

At their words, Brittany's eyes light up. She turns to Santana, rapt in the same kind of uncontainable excitement she wore inside the store. "Do you want to watch the train come into the depot, darlin'?" Brittany asks breathlessly.

"Sure," Santana consents, uncertain why Brittany seems so excited but willing to go along all the same.

(What she doesn't tell Brittany is that she wants to do everything with her, amongst one million other things.)

"Excuse me, sir," Brittany importunes the passing man. When he turns to look at her, she offers him a guileless smile. "Do you know the time?"

"It's a half past ten," the man reads from his watch.

From the expression Brittany wears on her face, you'd think he had issued her a personal challenge. She narrows her eyes and stares down the road, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. She sits up from against the store front.

"Come on, darlin'. Let's go," she says, offering Santana her hand.

Santana doesn't bother to ask Brittany to where.

(What Santana doesn't tell Brittany is really just the thing.)

* * *

><p>One week ago, if you were to have asked Santana Lopez if she ever thought she would find herself running down the widest main street in the United States whilst trying to beat a train to its station, she would have told you no and probably frowned at you.<p>

But a lot can happen in one week—and especially when such a person as Brittany Pierce exists—and so Santana is running down the widest main street in the United States, and maybe she will just beat the train, and, at the moment, she couldn't frown if she were to try.

(How could she, when she's with Brittany?)

Without knowing whether the stationmaster would allow them onto the platform to meet the train or not, the girls have decided to return to camp to watch the tracks from a hillside.

Santana wears her shoes tied at her belt by their laces—they'd already proven obnoxious to her just walking through town, so she durst not risk running while wearing them, too—and keeps hold of Brittany by the pinky finger as they sprint back toward the circus camp from Onawa.

She and Brittany dart between carriages and mounted men, breathing heavily through wide, open-mouthed smiles. Their hair billows behind them in blonde and blue-black pennants, and they alternate their lead according to the obstacles they dodge, laughing every so often as they nearly bowl into this or that other traffic along the road.

The people they pass stare at them, stupefied, not quite sure what to make of the two wind-quick circus girls sprinting through their gilly town.

Santana's heart rides high in her chest all the while. Whenever Brittany sneaks a glance at her, she can't help but grin. It seems, in a strange way, like they can see everyone around them, but no one can really see them.

Green rushes at their sides, and the sky bounces in Santana's vision. She doesn't think she's ever run so fast before, even when she and Brittany woke up late after stargazing and had to race to Ma Jones' wagon. Her lungs burn, and her feet stumble, but still she doesn't falter as long as Brittany keeps hold on her.

The girls careen into camp, kicking up dust along the dirt road, not ten minutes after setting out from downtown Onawa. If people kept records of things like "the shortest amount of time in which two circus girls have ever raced from town to camp," Santana feels certain that she and Brittany would have just set a new one. They only slow when they hit the wagon bay.

"Wait, darlin'!" Brittany pants, tugging Santana to a stop just behind a landau.

(It takes Santana's body almost a full ten seconds to realize the change in momentum.)

(Her heartbeat and the blood in her veins still surge, forward, forward, forward.)

"We've gotta be careful," Brittany says breathlessly, nodding toward the white city. "Mrs. Schuester has the best way of turning up at the worst times," she reminds Santana, "and Ma Jones might want us to help her fix up lunch. If we want to get to the hills, we're gonna have to sneak."

"Like le Chevalier Dupin," Santana supplies, the literary name slipping from her lips before she can help herself. She starts. "He's a detective. From fictional stories," she explains when Brittany pulls a face.

"Puck wouldn't have known that one, if I'd asked him," Brittany says wisely.

Santana grins, "No, he wouldn't have—le Chevalier is French."

The girls share a laugh at Puck's expense, and Brittany's eyes linger along the upward curve of Santana's mouth for just a few seconds too long. When Santana catches Brittany staring, Brittany turns back toward the white city proper.

"We'll go along the outside of the tents where the Equestrienne Coterie and kitchen girls sleep," she says conspiratorially, finally catching her breath. "We'll walk along the shadows."

"Quiet like mice?" Santana supplies.

"Quiet like mice," Brittany agrees.

If you had asked Santana one week ago if she ever thought she would be creeping through midmorning shadow, clasping hands with the girl she loves, hoping to watch a train pull in from atop a hill if only the two bossiest ladies at the circus don't catch her going to see it and put her to work first, she wouldn't have known what to say to you at all.

Now Santana couldn't feel happier to find herself doing just that, though—clasping hands with the girl she loves and creeping around the circus like a sneak-thief.

Both she and Brittany hold their breaths, barely respiring as they sink into this shadow and then scurry across its adjacent sunspot between the tent slats, the soles of their bare feet finding warm earth and then cool grass and warm earth and cool grass again and again. Brittany holds so tightly to Santana's fingers that Santana can almost feel Brittany's bones against her bones.

A tremulous nervousness jitters beneath Santana's breastbone, weak as a windswept flame in a tiny night lamp. Most of her fear is just part of the game. Somehow the moment feels very important, though Santana and Brittany really have nothing to lose. And that's just the thing, isn't it?

Just as Brittany suggested, they creep around the peripheries of the white city, passing by tent row after tent row, and finally the equestrienne and kitchen girls' tents, all along the corners of the circus property. Once they round the edge of the camp, Brittany gives Santana a meaningful look, and the two girls break into a run, scurrying away from the white city, still hand in hand. They reach the forest which separates the circus from the hills beyond it in an instant.

"We made it, darlin'," Brittany says breathlessly, and Santana keeps tight hold to her as they slip into the wood.

Santana had never entered a real forest before today. She finds that the instant she and Brittany pass from the open prairie through the tree line, the temperature drops around them, everything cool and shady in an instant.

The air in the forest smells wet and thick with earth and green, like freshly overturned dirt in the garden, but also like something slowly falling away, passing into decay. Sticks and leaves in various states of decomposition scratch at the undersides of Santana's feet, and the ground sinks beneath her, a dark, moldable clay. Strange shadows play over her and Brittany's faces as clouds and sun parley through a latticework of canopy branches. The forest doesn't hold its breath; it breathes and breathes and breathes.

(One long, living, dying sigh.)

Moss and lichens scale the tree trunks, rutted with uneven bark, and little titters of life announce themselves here and there: a squirrel wending up an oak, his tail writing calligraphy after him; a bird alighting upon a cottonwood branch, his wing feathers ducking like the colorful bobber on a fishing-line below water when the fisherman has a bite. If Santana could imagine a place where secrets crawled away to take naps and find their own respite, she thinks the forest might be it.

"It's beautiful," she says quietly.

"Yeah, darlin'," Brittany nods.

(She looks away before Santana can catch her eyes, quicker than anything in the forest.)

Though she and Brittany have only just set foot in the wood, Santana already feels lost in it, and so feels glad when Brittany starts to lead her off in what must be the direction of the rolling hills that overlook the town. Whenever there aren't shafts of white sunlight cutting through leafless spots in the forest canopy, blue shade pervades, casting long shadows everywhere. Brittany couldn't be more beautiful under the gloom, her cat-eyes deep like riddles or magic spells and her pretty pink lips pursed, clever like a secret.

(Santana wouldn't mind it if Brittany led her full away into Fairy.)

They trek over uneven ground and do so without speaking, avoiding a fallen log here, sidestepping a bush or bramble there, their fingers still knotted up like a stalwart maritime braid. Brittany hums tunelessly and stares up at the canopy, the blue in her eyes catching fractals in the light, the tips of her hair translucent and fine as gilded thread. Santana stares at her, shameless in the moment. If there has ever been a more beautiful girl in the world than Brittany Pierce in the forest, Santana can't believe it.

(For a moment, she loves Brittany without searching for restraint.)

(She would follow Brittany anywhere.)

Santana hears the creek before she sees it: a shushing sound playing over the lesser skittering, trilling, and breathing of the forest. She sees the creek as soon as she and Brittany round the trunk of a particularly sturdy oak: several yards across in breadth, but hardly deep enough to soak anyone past mid-calf, paved with rocks at the bottom and clear enough from which to drink, if one felt so athirst. A tree leaf lilts down from the canopy and catches on the water; it takes nearly a full minute before the current carries it away.

"Do you mind getting your feet wet?" Brittany asks. Santana shakes her head no. Brittany gestures to a flathead stone along the creek's bank. "Step up here so we don't get your skirt wet, then, at least," she says and Santana complies, hopping up onto the rock while keeping Brittany's hand in her own, though the rock shifts underfoot.

Brittany steadies Santana and stands directly in front of her, so closely that only a few inches of space exist between them. Suddenly, Santana seethes with hot though the forest feels cool. Brittany bites her tongue between her teeth and drops to one knee in front of Santana, kneeling on the forest floor.

(Santana's heart leaps to her chest, aflutter.)

"Hold still, darlin'," Brittany directs before taking a handful of Santana's skirt in one hand and drawing it up to tuck under Santana's belt, effectively raising Santana's hemline so her costume won't drag through the creek water.

Brittany peels back Santana's skirt like the purple and blue petals of a wilted flower, revealing Santana's right thigh and knickers to sunlight they've has never before directly seen, except for maybe from within a circus shower stall.

It's a simple motion, and yet Santana can't help but hold her breath as Brittany performs it.

(Does Brittany hold her breath, too?)

The stoked feeling Santana has carried in her belly since this morning flares, and her pulse moves low in her body, running so much deeper than her skin. She feels it so keenly when Brittany's fingers press into her waist, adjusting their handiwork, playing over Santana's hipbone to smooth the fabric under their touch. Santana inhales sharply.

"Sorry if I pinched you," Brittany apologizes.

"You didn't," Santana promises.

(She suddenly longs to kiss Brittany so long and deeply that their kiss would break every spell ever set upon these woods.)

(When Brittany stands, Santana glances from Brittany's eyes to her mouth to the hinge at her jaw, helpless, aglow with a want that she can't explain in words.)

"All right, darlin'—," Brittany starts, a funny tightness in her voice.

"What about your skirt?" Santana interrupts.

Brittany glances down at her own bare ankles and then at the creek, gauging its depth. "I think I'll be all right," she says slyly, indicating the shortness of her tatty dress, though her eyes shine with some quiet pleasure that Santana can't name. Brittany extends her hand to Santana again. "Now don't slip," she warns, taking a step into the creek, inviting Santana to follow her.

Santana can only imagine what her grandmother would have to say about her wading shoeless into strange waters in the middle of the day, and all just to catch sight of some train from a faraway hillside. Luckily, Santana's grandmother isn't here to say anything at all, and Santana has an easy time pretending that she doesn't know any better than to just go where she would.

(With Brittany.)

The creek feels as cold as the inside of the icebox at the bachelor cottage after a fresh delivery from the iceman, and Santana shivers as soon as her toes enter the water. Brittany shivers, too, and both girls laugh a little, less amused than uncomfortable. A thin film of slime slicks the rocks lining the creek bed under Santana's feet, and she takes her time finding her balance so as not to slip. Brittany seems less cautious than she does but still fully aware.

"Just think of how cold this water would be in the winter," Brittany says, awed. She takes a first step, leading Santana along behind her.

Despite how slowly the girls go, it doesn't take long for them to cross the creek. Brittany moves gracefully through the current, the water ribboning around her ankles in white rivulets as she chooses to set a foot here, then there, taking long, careful steps across the creek. Santana's toes slip and slide over the rocks and dig into little banks of silt, but despite the uneven terrain and steady pressure of the water stream, she maintains her balance.

When she and Brittany step up onto the opposite bank from where they started, leaves and grass cling to their wet feet. Santana tugs her skirt out from under her belt, covering her bare leg and the exposed fabric of her undergarments again. Looking up ahead, Santana sees that the forest starts to clear out not twenty yards from where they stand, revealing a meadow stretch just before the foot of the first hill.

"We should probably run, Britt," she says. "I'm not sure what time it is, but we don't want to miss the train."

"Sure thing," Brittany says grinning. She repositions her hold on Santana's hand and takes one stutter-step before breaking into a run, tugging Santana after her.

Dodging forest obstacles proves much harder at a sprinting pace than it does walking, but Santana can't help but feel a kind of unfettered glee chasing Brittany through the woods. They hurtle a log and bound over low, scrubby ferns, steering toward the open light beyond the edge of the trees.

When first they break into the sun, Santana can't help but laugh, not because anything seems funny but because she doesn't think she's ever felt this way before or that anyone has ever felt the same as she does, trailing after the most beautiful girl in the world, hiding from the circus.

At the sound of Santana's voice, Brittany glances back over her shoulder; she wears an open smile, canine-happy and with her hair in streams around her face, curling over her cheeks in strands of seamless gold upon the wind. She laughs, too, and Santana will be damned even more than she already is if it isn't the most wonderful sound in the world.

As they start to mount the hill, their breathing grows deeper and more labored. The sky carries a strange grayish tinge where there aren't low, white clouds, but the sun still shines like laughter—like them—as they climb toward their destination.

Santana very nearly collapses once they reach the hill's crest except that Brittany tug, tug, tugs her to the side of the hill that overlooks the town of Onawa proper, eager to see if they can even spy the depot from their perch. Sure enough, they can.

It's pretty in miniature and perfectly visible from their view, along with the rest of the town and the widest main street, U.S.A. The two primary rail lines—one directed north, the other south—traverse the earth for what must be miles, the Onawa depot pinning them together like two fabric edges that will someday be a seam.

For a second, both girls pant and hold their breaths, but then Santana spots something moving along the southerly track—a train, headed unmistakably toward the Onawa station.

"Look, Britt," she pants, pointing.

For the next long while, Brittany and Santana huddle close together, watching the train pull into the station. They knot their hands in front of them, breathing through open mouths, Brittany wearing the kind of smile that makes it seem as if she's just won something incredibly valuable. A long ghost trail of gray smoke extends after the train as its red, green, blue, brown, and black cars race along the yellowed grass, corn-snake pretty upon the prairie.

Brittany holds her breath until the trains lets out a long, doleful whistle to signal its arrival in Onawa.

Its cry hangs upon the wind.

After a second, Brittany steps away from the edge of the hill. She leads Santana to a soft patch of grass and sets down, inviting Santana to join her. Both girls settle into the grass, and Brittany reclines on her side, Santana lying down next to her, supine. Santana fumbles with the knot in her shoelaces until she frees her shoes from her belt, setting them aside. Both she and Brittany sigh, and Brittany immediately begins plucking at the grass.

"I always leave on trains," Brittany whispers, staring back out over Onawa. "I never see them coming home."

Though Brittany doesn't say what she does with any sort of sadness in it, Santana still feels a pang to hear Brittany's words. Is Brittany Pierce circus-lonely? Somehow Santana had hoped that Brittany was immune.

Brittany stares out over the plains below the hill, a blueness in her eyes that an artist could only dream to paint, her hair flagging around her face in wisps on the light wind, and Santana scoots in closer to her, giving her hand a squeeze. Though Santana has seen Brittany many times—and hopes to see Brittany always—this moment seems like another one in which Santana sees Brittany entirely anew.

"You must have ridden a thousand trains, growing up," Santana observes, realizing that her own last week has been Brittany's every day since forever. "You're probably good and tired of traveling through all these same little towns over and over again, aren't you?"

Brittany looks away from the plains to meet Santana's eyes. She shrugs. "The circus runs three different routes," she says kindly, "so we only visit these towns once every three years."

Santana can't quite hide her surprise; she had never imagined that the circus traveled so far and wide beyond the towns she already visited with it.

"Really?" she says, squinting against the sunlight.

Brittany nods and smiles, still kind. "We run routes through the Midwest out of Mammoth Springs, Arkansas; the East out of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania; and the South out of Ashland, Kentucky," she recites. "I like the South route best because they have all the best chow," she says helpfully. After a second's pause, she adds, "That's where Ma Jones is from," as if to account for the quality of the regional cooking.

Santana starts. "Wait," she says, shaking her head a bit to clear the shock. "You mean Ma Jones wasn't born at the circus?"

"I think Ma was born at a circus," Brittany says thoughtfully, "just not this one. She's about the same age as I am, I think, and she and her mama came to our circus just after I turned six years old. Some people said that Ma's daddy died on the rail line working for their old circus, but I never asked Ma about it, so I don't know if that's true.

Ma's mama was our head cook for a long time and she made good chow, too. Ma was her helper up until she died—we were about twelve years old then, I think. When her mama first got sick, Ma stopped singing on the midway and took over the kitchen, and after the cough took her mama, Mr. Adams put Ma in charge of the kitchen for good, even though she was so young.

Ma's always made the best chow, and Sam'll fight anybody who says differently. He likes to pretend he likes her because she cooks so well, but he's always been sweet on her, ever since the first time he saw her when she first came to camp, just like I've been s—"

Brittany stops mid-sentence, and her cheeks and ears flush sunset pink. Her mouth hangs open, and she looks away from Santana as if she's suddenly just remembered something. She rips up the tuft of grass she'd been teasing all the way by the roots in one pull.

A funny feeling flitters around Santana's chest.

(What is it Santana that forgot the other day?)

(Why is it that people call them wishing stars anyhow?)

Santana's heart wants to believe that Brittany stopped herself from telling a secret not unlike Santana's—and perhaps even a secret about Santana, maybe—but Santana's mind quickly quashes the impulse and brushes it aside.

The truth is that Santana doesn't know the exact reason why Brittany has so suddenly turned mum, but she supposes that it's probably because Sam swore Brittany to needless secrecy in regards to his love for Ma Jones and that Brittany feels embarrassed for having betrayed his confidence.

Santana wishes she could tell Brittany not to fret—Santana has known that Sam loves Ma since the morning Sam helped Santana dismantle her tent and brought Ma a dirty dandelion afterwards—but she doesn't want to risk making Brittany feel any worse than she already does.

"So have you known Sam all your life, then?" Santana asks, not only to spare Brittany any further discomfiture but also because she genuinely wants to know everything there is to know about Brittany's upbringing at the circus.

(Is there really anyone in this world as interesting as Brittany Pierce?)

Santana smiles at Brittany, easy, and Brittany seems to relax, melting down lower against the ground and releasing her handful of grass clippings to scatter into the wind. If Brittany notices Santana's purposeful diversion, she doesn't seem to mind it.

Brittany hums and grins her cat grin. "Sam was born the day after I was, and he's followed me around ever since," she explains. "We played together a lot when we were little, except on Sundays because his daddy says that's the Lord's Day, and the Lord didn't want Sam in the mud. I don't know why the Lord would mind a little mud if He was the one who made it anyhow, but Sam and I still had a lot of fun during the week, before he started clowning and I started doing shows. Daddy didn't like me playing with Sam so much, I guess."

"Why not?" Santana asks, scrunching up her brow.

(She can hardly imagine that anyone—even surly Mr. Pierce—would have a good reason to dislike Samuel Evans, and especially when Sam was a little boy.)

Brittany shrugs and starts plucking at another tuft of grass beside her, this time gently. "Daddy wanted me to play with Rachel Berry instead," she explains, and Santana thinks she understands.

(Rules.)

"God, I can't imagine Rachel Berry as a child!" Santana snipes.

Brittany laughs. "I didn't like playing with Rachel very much," she admits, face turned up in a wily grin. "She was really bossy and always told me I didn't play with our dolls right."

Santana's mouth falls open a little. "How can you play wrong with dolls?" she asks, scandalized.

Brittany shrugs and tugs up her tuft of grass, scattering it down the hillside in front of her. She still wears her wily grin. "I put their shoes on their little glass hands," she says, her grin shifting into a smirk. "And once I tied them to the bars on the lion cart with trapeze rope because I liked watching their arms and legs dance when the cart drove over bumps in the road."

Santana laughs loudly. "Brittany!" she crows.

(Is there really anyone in this world as interesting as Brittany Pierce?)

(Santana's heart squeezes in her chest, and she knows just exactly why.)

"Rachel called me a delinquent then," Brittany says. A pause. "I told her my daddy's Appalachian, though."

Santana falls back across the grass, laughing, and tears spring to her eyes. It takes almost a full minute for her to stifle her laughter. She stares up at the sky through blurry, quaking vision, watching clouds pass so low overhead that they cast shadows along the earth.

When Santana looks back at Brittany, she finds Brittany obviously pleased for having ruined her composure. Brittany bites at her bottom lip and wears a small, warm smile.

"It's just hard to imagine everyone at the circus so much younger than they are now," Santana says, still giggling. "And so much smaller, too."

Brittany hums a happy note. "Mama used to worry that I would never fill out the target for Daddy's act," she says, watching Santana like she just can't have enough of seeing her.

Santana hadn't realized that Brittany hasn't always assisted her father until just this moment. She sits up slightly from the grass. "When did you start helping your father with his act?" she asks, immensely curious to know Brittany's answer.

Brittany looks up and away, reckoning. She seems like she expects the answer to come to her from the clouds. "I've always helped with the little things, like wetting down his oilstones and putting his knives in his bandolier before the shows, but I didn't join the act until I was eight years old," she says. "That's the year when Mama was gonna have my baby sister."

(Briefly, Santana imagines an eight year old Brittany standing in front of the target backboard, holding stock-still as her father hurls knives at her head.)

(Santana's heart aches, and she fears for Brittany in retrospect.)

Brittany goes on: "Daddy didn't want to throw knives at Mama on account of the baby, so he trained me up to help him in her place. Then once Mama died, I got the job for good. I didn't like it much at first, though," she shrugs.

Santana has only heard Brittany speak of her mother on a few other occasions. Though Santana feels terribly interested to know more about Mrs. Pierce and what became of her and the baby sister Brittany just now mentioned whom Santana has never yet seen, Santana doesn't dare to ask, figuring that Brittany will talk about her mother if she wants to talk about her and that Brittany doesn't need Santana prying into family business otherwise.

It occurs to Santana that this may well be the most important conversation she's ever had in her whole life. Never has Brittany solicited so much information about herself to Santana at one time before. Santana drinks it in as one would the richest coffee, holding the flavor on her tongue, allowing it to warm her from the insides out. She wants to memorize everything there is to know about Brittany Pierce.

"What would you want to do at the circus, if you weren't a human not-a-target, then?" Santana asks softly, staring into Brittany's eyes—soft and deep and blue like the forest gloom—as if she might find Brittany's answer there.

Brittany's eyes turn even softer once Santana asks her question. She peers at Santana like Santana is something brand new and somehow wonderful. After a second, Brittany laughs her silent laugh and glances away.

(Have her ears turned pink again?)

"Once we were down in Danville, Virginia when I was about five years old or so, I think," Brittany starts, shifting on her elbow, "and it rained and rained and rained all day for three days in a row, so much that we couldn't even pack up to leave for our next stop, and Mr. Adams had to cancel two shows in advance. The whole camp flooded up to everyone's ankles. There was so much water everywhere," Brittany trails away for a second, remembering. After a beat, she resumes her story: "Daddy gave me this little steel pail and told me I was part of the 'bucket brigade.' I thought that was a real job at the circus for the longest time after that."

Santana's heart all but collapses in her chest.

(How can Brittany be so adorable all the time?)

"And that's what you wanted to do?" Santana asks in her smallest little Brittany-voice.

Brittany nods and bites her lower lip, "I thought I was gonna grow up and be the Head of the Bucket Brigade."

Before she can stop herself, Santana presses a hand to her heart. "Oh, Britt," she coos.

(_You're not fair!_ isn't quite right.)

(Maybe _You're perfect!_ instead?)

Brittany's cheeks color, and she ducks her head, self-conscious, her lip still teased between her teeth. She glances at Santana and then quickly away, embarrassed of herself for her childish misunderstanding. Her bashfulness tugs at Santana's heart.

"Britt," Santana says. "Britt, look at me." When Brittany won't look, Santana pouts her lip. "Britt... Britt... BrittBritt," she says altogether and in her sweetest voice.

The new nickname seems to catch Brittany's ear. Her face lights, and she looks up at Santana, suddenly eager and breathless. For a second, Santana wonders if Brittany won't kiss her, but then they both laugh instead and Santana files this new discovery—_BrittBritt_—away for future use, sucking her own bottom lip into her mouth, pleased with herself.

Now it's Brittany's turn to surprise Santana.

"How did you think your life would go before you joined the circus?" Brittany asks, looking up from where she tugs at the grass and staring deep into Santana's eyes, really, really seeing her.

No one has ever asked Santana such a thing before—not her father, who cared about Santana's every today but never about her tomorrows; not her grandmother, who groomed Santana for a future she and Santana never actually discussed together and that, ultimately, Santana couldn't hope to have; and certainly not Noah Puckerman, who brought Santana to the circus because she hadn't anywhere else to go and had nothing else awaiting her beyond the bachelor cottage garden but the lie he crafted to protect her.

(Strange how no one ever saw Santana for nearly nineteen years, and now Brittany sees her perfectly, in every shade and light.)

The question almost steals Santana's breath, so much does it surprise her, and Santana leans back upon the grass, wondering how best to answer. Evidently, Santana's slowness to reply stirs Brittany from her place because the next thing Santana knows the grass rustles, and a shadow falls over her as Brittany's face replaces her view of the sky, Brittany's hair forming a golden halo around them.

Santana's body reacts instantly to Brittany's new proximity, warming and rising to meet it. Her breath hitches behind her lips; she swims through her thoughts, trying to find any acceptable response to what Brittany asked her.

(Had Santana made some rule for herself this morning? What was it? Maybe she'll remember if only she kisses Brittany breathless first.)

After a long minute, Santana finds her words. "I never really thought about it," she says truthfully because, honestly, she never had occasion to ask herself such a question as Brittany just asked her prior to this very moment.

Brittany peers at Santana even more deeply, her expression still and waiting. "Well, how do you want your life to go now?" Brittany asks quietly, smoothing a hand through Santana's hair, her fingers electric upon Santana's skin, her body laid out alongside Santana's, their chests flush together. Their ribcages line up and Santana can feel Brittany's breath upon her cheeks. Their lips are so, so close. Santana could just sit up and—

(Has it started to rain?)

Santana answers without first thinking. "I want it to go exactly like this," she blurts out, surprising herself. For a second, she startles and hesitates before continuing. Can she speak without revealing her whole secret in her next breath? Brittany's earnest, waiting look convinces Santana to go on, choosing her words as carefully as a royal jeweler might choose gems to set into a crown, "I want it to be like being here. Like this. With you."

If Santana doubted for a second that she said the right thing, she can't anymore once she meets Brittany's eyes, which fill with the sort of brightness to which the big top limelight can never aspire. Brittany's whole face—whole self—turns into a grin.

"Oh, darlin'," Brittany says sweetly.

And in the next instant, Brittany kisses Santana perfectly breathless.

Vaguely, Santana's brain registers that it has indeed started to rain.

Though heavy clouds hang further off along the horizon, droplets fall from a passive plain of graying blue, cool upon hot skin and warm earth, pretty as shattered crystal against the strange stormless light.

(A sunshower.)

_(Tenemos un dicho, Santana: La hija del Diablo se casa hoy.)_

When Brittany and Santana's lips meet, a jolt travels through Santana, all the way down to her core. Her body rises, and she gasps into Brittany's mouth. At first, Brittany kisses Santana gently, her lips pillowed and plush, soft as a whisper. She dips her head lightly so that Santana almost has to reach for the kiss, and both her and Santana's eyes shutter closed at once.

Santana can feel love pulse through her heart like an electric current, and it seems as if her whole self follows Brittany along that same invisible string as always. When Brittany bears down further into Santana and catches Santana's bottom lip between her own, Santana whimpers because it seems so much like a homecoming.

(How had she ever been foolish enough to think she could keep from kissing Brittany if Brittany would have her, even for one day?)

Brittany leans onto her left hand and cups Santana's face with her right. Santana allows Brittany to turn her face, guiding her into a deeper kiss, feeling their chins and noses pressed together and their bodies running up against one another, warm and stoked and alive. Brittany's tongue hints at Santana's lower lip, waiting between her and Santana's mouths until Santana opens to it. The instant it enters Santana's mouth, Brittany lets out a voiced sigh, both sweet and rough at once, like smoked honey, and Santana's body plays to the sound, her pulse moving between her legs.

Santana wants without knowing what she wants exactly—just more of this and more of Brittany.

"Santana, I—," Brittany starts, speaking against Santana's lips, but stops herself with another kiss, tracing her tongue against Santana's until Santana whimpers again.

For an instant, Santana feels like the great, strong tide of this might just sweep her away, and she scrambles for something to hold, her hands moving to grip Brittany's hips. Brittany seems to like that, and her whole body shivers from it. She works her mouth against Santana's, her lips slipping down to paint Santana's chin with sloppy, careless attention, moving away from Santana's mouth purposefully, trailing along Santana's jaw until they stop just under Santana's ear.

When Santana feels Brittany's tongue on her skin, her body moves into the touch, and everything speeds inside her. Her heartbeat picks up, especially between her legs, and she thinks that if something doesn't happen soon, she might die from wanting Brittany so much.

"Brittany," she whines, shifting into the sensation of wet-on-soft-skin, caught up in raindrops and kisses and Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

"May I touch—?" Brittany pants, and Santana feels Brittany's thumb strum over her upper ribs like the fingers of a Spanish guitarist upon his instrument's strings.

It takes a full five seconds for Santana to realize what Brittany means.

"Please," she says, surprised at the sound of her own voice, coffee-dark and breathless with want.

She feels nervous; no one has ever touched her where Brittany wants to touch her, neither upon her clothing nor upon her skin. Santana thinks vaguely of what her grandmother might say about impropriety, but she can't hold the thought for long without nearly blowing her mind's fuse. Honestly, she can't imagine what her grandmother might think of this moment on a whole and doesn't want to do it—not when Brittany is so soft and warm and close and the only thing that matters.

Brittany's touch traces from Santana's ribs up to Santana's chest, running over the round of Santana's breast. Even through Santana's shirt, it feels like _un milagro enviado por el Diablo o Dios o lo que sea, lo que sea, amén_.

Santana curls to Brittany's touch and kisses frantically at the underside of Brittany's chin and the side of Brittany's face—anywhere she can kiss the most perfect, wonderful girl in the world. Brittany starts to bear down. She slinks over Santana, her knees finding uneasy place on either side of Santana's thighs, and the girls' kisses turn sloppier and wetter. Brittany thumbs over Santana's nipple through fabric, and Santana nearly jumps out of her skin. She squirms under Brittany and lets out a noise she has never heard herself make before.

Brittany seems to like it. She fits her hips over Santana's and sinks down, still supporting herself on her left forearm, but otherwise laying with her breasts and belly and waist pressed up against Santana's. Her touch feels amazing, a perfect fit everywhere. Brittany kisses at the hinge of Santana's jaw, and, without thinking, Santana pulls down on Brittany's hips, as if Brittany's kiss tripped some sort of lever inside her.

Their bodies crush against each other, at the pulse point between Santana's legs.

"Oh."

Santana's mind blanks, and her hands shift lower against Brittany's back, curling around Brittany from behind. She breathes as if tempest-tossed. She has never felt like this—not even when she and Brittany have kissed inside her tent before. The stoked smolder inside her has flared into something much brighter and more urgent. She wants Brittany everywhere and feels at attention along every inch of her skin.

Their mouths meet, reckless, tongues tracing each other, and when Brittany whimpers against Santana's lips, Santana wonders if Brittany feels as enraptured as she does.

_I love you_.

Suddenly, Santana wants nothing more than to make Brittany feel good because Brittany is wonderful and perfect and deserves every amazing thing in this world, and Santana wants to give it all to her, freely.

(Wants to give Brittany everything.)

Santana works into their kiss, spelling love along Brittany's lips, and grinds their hips together again. She has never felt so much and all at once before. Brittany is soft and graceful everywhere. She tangles her fingers through Santana's hair, and her eyelashes flutter against Santana's cheek, gentle as butterfly wings.

"Darlin'," she pants.

(This is how Santana wants her life to go, forever and ever and always.)

The rain falls harder now, suddenly sharp upon their skin and saturating their clothing more than just in scattered drops. It feels cold when everything else between them burns hot, and, for a second, Santana wonders if steam will start to rise from where they lie. Her feet and Brittany's tangle in the grass, and Brittany rolls her hips against Santana's. The motion feels almost like whatever nameless thing it is Santana wants but not quite and not yet. Santana kisses Brittany's skin and holds to Brittany more tightly.

"Britt," she babbles, overwhelmed.

A bell tolls in the distance, high and loud.

Both Brittany and Santana jolt, and Brittany sits up, supporting herself on her left arm. She looks like a storm, with tussled hair and her eyes a deep, Atlantic blue that Santana has never seen from them before, her lips swollen, wet and pink—raw—hanging open as she breathes heavy like she's run a race. Brittany's ribcage heaves against Santana's. She looks awestruck and dizzy, her pulse pounding at her throat where Santana can see it. She even smells different, like rain and something else, animal and heated.

"What was that?" she says stupidly, and both she and Santana pause to listen.

The bell continues to ring, growing angrier in its peals.

"That's the lunch bell!" they both deduce at once.

When Brittany peels herself from Santana, sitting up onto her knees, Santana's body throbs from missing her touch. Santana scrambles to get upright, suddenly lightheaded and feeling stupider than she ever has before in her life. Her mind and heart and body are all still kissing Brittany; the only alert part of her is that awful nagging that always insists that she must follow rules, no matter how she yearns to do otherwise.

"Do you think they're looking for us?" she asks, her eyes opened too widely.

(She can't stop staring at Brittany.)

"How about we let 'em look, darlin'?" Brittany says almost drunkenly, leaning forward to press another kiss to Santana's open mouth.

Their lips don't meet before a shadow rolls over them, and the sky turns darker. They hear a crack and what started as a sunshower—_una boda_—becomes a full-fledged deluge in an instant.

Rain pours down, saturating their eyelashes and catching on their swollen lips. It causes Santana to shiver though her skin still burns from Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. Thunder grumbles, as if the sky means to clear its throat.

"What do you think, darlin'?" Brittany asks, laughing at nature's sudden turn.

Santana peels herself up off the earth, brushing wet grass from her skirt. She smoothes down her clothing. Even though she wants nothing more than to just stay here with Brittany, kissing forever, she knows they oughtn't to linger outdoors in a thunderstorm, and especially not when the circus folk down at camp probably want to know what's become of her. She smoothes back a lock of her own wet hair from her face, squinting through the gloom—now thoroughly gray and even with a greenish tinge—and extends a hand to Brittany, still kneeling on the ground.

"Come on, BrittBritt," she says, helping Brittany to her feet.

The grin on Brittany's face almost makes the leaving worth it.

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana scurry down the hillside, linked at their pinky fingers, running for the shelter of the forest as fat, cold raindrops accost them from on high. Both Brittany's tatty, thin dress and Santana's cotton blouse have soaked entirely though, showing off their skin in patches beneath the fabric. Goosebumps rise along their arms, and they spit the water that wets their lips with their every running breath, laughing as their feet slosh over saturated prairie ground.<p>

The rain thins the instant they duck under the forest canopy, droplets crying from the leaves overhead like staccato piano notes. The woods smell muskier and wetter than they did before, humid green and gritty brown, and they feel cooler, too, to the point where Santana almost shivers from the cold.

Wet clay squishes beneath Brittany and Santana's bare toes, and the girls blink away the water beads collected on their eyelashes. Brittany's cheeks shine pink, either from running or the rain or both. The girls scamper toward the creek bed, laughing at nothing really except for their own particular brand of misfortune.

(Will they ever get to kiss for as long as they like without someone or something interrupting them from it?)

Though it only just started to rain, they find the creek already higher than it was when they first crossed it, frothy with runoff and traveling along at a faster speed than before. Droplets dive into the water from where the green forest canopy parts above the stream, creating concentric circles upon circles all up and down the current, little cymbals ringing in a silent orchestra.

"Uh oh," Brittany says, eyeing this new minor hazard with exaggerated alarm. She flashes Santana a smirk. "You okay to cross this, darlin'? I could give you a piggyback ride, if you like."

Santana laughs. "How about I give you a piggyback ride, BrittBritt?" she teases back, adjusting her shoes, retied at her belt, giving Brittany's pinky finger a squeeze.

Brittany flushes at the nickname and grins just like before.

(Aren't all the stories about wishes coming true?)

(Stories with beautiful fairies and enchanted woods?)

Just before they step into the water, Brittany leans forward and presses a quick kiss to Santana's cheek.

"What was that for?" Santana asks stupidly, touching her fingers to the spot, still tuned to Brittany's every touch strummed in their private key.

"For luck," Brittany says simply, as if they need it.

(Can lucky things love bad omens?)

The girls clasp their hands together and descend into the current, which now reaches up to their calves and pushes against them, more insistent than before. Santana's feet slip over the rocks, but every time she stumbles, Brittany holds her up, and she likewise for Brittany. They walk almost drunkenly, stray splatter from the raindrops spangling their skirts and knees and thighs. Vaguely, Santana regrets that she didn't bother to tuck her skirt under her belt for this crossing like Brittany did for her before.

When they step onto the opposite bank, the girls nearly trip all over each other, their feet still clumsy from the current that no longer eddies round their legs. Santana falls forward, collapsing against Brittany, and they both laugh. Before she can stop herself, Santana sneaks a kiss to Brittany's mouth, planting it right where Brittany's smile starts.

"What was that for?" Brittany asks, sounding just as silly as Santana feels.

Santana shrugs, "To celebrate." When Brittany doesn't follow, Santana makes an imploring face and explains, "For making it across the creek."

Brittany kisses Santana back, full on the lips, and Santana's head whirls, as stirred up as the creek current. She stumbles even further into Brittany, allowing Brittany to walk her haphazardly forward, away from the water.

"And that one?" she asks, dazed.

"You called me BrittBritt, and it's not fair," Brittany pouts, resting their foreheads together.

She pecks Santana's lips again and then again, until Santana begins to wonder if she'll ever be able to walk without tripping over her own feet anymore.

The girls stand with their faces so close to each other that Santana can discern every golden fleck in the quick of Brittany's eyes and the honeyed lightness of her eyelashes. Santana revels in their linked hands, in Brittany's little pecks, and in their ceaseless smiling. She wishes they could remain forever in these shadows.

When Brittany pulls away, Santana almost whines for missing her. When Brittany begins to scamper over the forest floor, Santana immediately gives chase.

Their hands still twist together, and they pay less attention to the fallen logs and sudden turns than they ought to do, clumsy for their sudden race. Brittany allows Santana to catch her after just a few yards and twirl her up against a tree trunk, pinning her there by the hips. Their bodies all but melt together and Santana hears Brittany's breath hitch as they kiss through secret smiles. She hums into Brittany's mouth.

"That's just for you," she mumbles, nodding into the warm wet of Brittany's mouth, the cool wet of the forest all around them.

"Can't we just stay here forever?" Brittany complains, wrapping her arms around Santana's waist like a belt and linking her hands together to hold Santana in place. Their bodies all but pulse from their proximity, and Santana can feel Brittany's slick skin through her soaked dress. The stoked feeling changes to the sweetest kind of ache. "I did tell Rachel we were going to run away and become gillies," Brittany recalls.

"Let's just be forest people," Santana whispers, her voice rich and hushed. She kisses a line down Brittany's neck, and Brittany shifts to afford her more room in which to work.

Brittany's thumbs start to pet at Santana's hips, and, oh God, Santana would give anything to get closer, closer, closer. Brittany leans down to meet Santana's mouth, and they kiss, slow, stupid, and perfect, their mouths lazy, though everything else in them moves so quick and fleet.

"We'd make the best forest people," Brittany laughs, her ribcage shaking against Santana's body.

Santana laughs, too, and kisses Brittany again, seeking out the last traces of candy sweet inside her mouth.

A gasp.

A gasp that belongs to neither Brittany nor Santana cuts through the forest quiet.

Both girls stiffen. Brittany's hands still at Santana's waist, and Santana's fingers pause, tangled up in Brittany's hair.

Quinn Fabray stands behind them, stray strands from her usually immaculate Gibson bun wetted across her brow and flushed cheeks, her mouth hanging open and one hand drawn up to her breast, lingering just upon her heart.

She looks as surprised as if she had just discovered a second moon in the sky.

"Miss Fabray!" Brittany breathes, as motionless as a startled doe.

Santana gapes at Quinn, feeling entirely and dreadfully caught, hating the way that Quinn stares at her and Brittany like they've just committed some crime. While Santana doesn't know her exact crime, if she's even committed any, she does know unequivocally that whatever she and Brittany are to each other ought to remain a secret and that their kisses aren't for Quinn Fabray's pretty hazel eyes to see. Whatever they are is private—not for Quinn or for anyone.

Nothing in the world feels righter than kissing Brittany to Santana, and yet Santana understands, perhaps instinctually, that very few other persons outside from herself and Brittany would condone their kissing or even tolerate it if they saw it.

In the attic of her mind, Santana keeps a trunk filled with all the scolding that her grandmother would give her if her grandmother knew about what Santana and Brittany got up to together. Though Abuela never forbade Santana from kissing girls—why bother to outlaw something impossible?—Abuela did tell Santana that she ought never to kiss a man if she wasn't already married to him, for kissing excites dangerous passions that will prove the undoing of the unwedded lady.

Since arriving at the circus, Santana has rather ignored Abuela's advice in regards to Puck, allowing him to kiss her and two nights ago kissing him herself, and yet, so far, she hasn't felt any sort of passion for him. Kissing Brittany has proven quite the different story for Santana and her passions, though.

(When Santana kisses Brittany, she feels everything.)

Briefly, Santana wonders why Abuela would disparage the vivid, quick, sweet, aching feeling Santana gets from kissing Brittany when it seems so good and like the most likely thing in the world, but then she remembers how Abuela so often seemed to starve herself from the most joyous things in life and wonders if she can't blame Abuela's austerity for her caution.

Frankly, Santana doesn't know exactly what Abuela meant by what she said, but she does know that the look in Quinn's eyes at the moment has something to do with Abuela's advice. Santana doesn't feel ashamed of how kissing Brittany makes her feel, but she does feel frightened as to how Quinn will react, seeing her kiss Brittany open-mouthed and giddy in a rainy wood.

After all: Santana and Brittany weren't exactly kissing in a public way.

(Vaguely, Santana wonders what Abuela would hate more: knowing that Santana kisses Brittany, the girl she loves, or knowing that Santana has kissed Puck, the boy she doesn't love at all?)

Though every ounce of commonsense that Santana possesses screams at Santana that she should say something to explain away her compromising position—or to at least run from Quinn while she still has the chance—Santana finds that she can neither move nor speak. Her mouth hangs open and she gasps for air, scarcely finding any.

Quinn's brow furrows almost violently and she recoils, mouth still ajar, her mouth and pretty features suddenly sharp like knives. "What are you—?" Quinn hisses, taking a step back. She sounds almost angry.

But just then a new voice fills the wood.

(Santana's heartbeat races for an entirely different reason than it did kissing Brittany.)

"Santana Puckerman! Brittany Pierce!"

Mrs. Schuester appears from between two oak trees, Ken following at her heels. She parts the branches in front of her and steps forward. As she does so, she seems to notice Quinn's presence on the scene for the first time.

(Mrs. Schuester doesn't bother to hold the branches for Ken; they snap back against his belly as she progresses, and he flinches, annoyed.)

"Oh, you've found them!" Mrs. Schuester says to Quinn, sounding both relieved and exasperated at once.

"We got 'em here!" Ken shouts over his shoulder, and a contingent of supes appears through the brush, including Shane, Finn Hudson, and the yeller boy whose name Santana does not yet know. Each one of the supes wears a perturbed scowl and tugs his hat down low over his eyes once he sights Brittany and Santana, standing against the tree.

Brittany peels back from Santana on impulse, but they still stand close enough to one another that Santana can hear Brittany's breathing, uneven for her shock.

"We've been searching for you two for two hours!" Mrs. Schuester scolds, stepping up just behind Quinn. She wags her warning finger in Brittany and Santana's direction. "Ken's had everyone out calling your names!" she snarls through gritted teeth.

"He has?" Brittany mumbles, glancing between Santana, Mrs. Schuester, Ken, and the ground, rocking slightly on her heels and pressing her fingertips together between her two hands.

Mrs. Schuester rolls her eyes, frustrated with Brittany. "Of course!" she snaps. "You skipped morning chores when both Ma Jones and I could have used you for work, and then you didn't show up to lunch at all! Rachel Berry said you went to town this morning, but Puck and Finn went there to buy some wagon parts and didn't see you anywhere along the main street. Your father had no idea you'd even left camp, Brittany! And Puck worried that Santana might have swooned somewhere along the side of the road from not feeling well! Honestly, where have you two been?"

Santana heart drops like a brick into the pit of her stomach. She doesn't dare to breathe. All of a sudden, she feels dizzy and queasy, and it only takes her a second to logic out the reason why.

Two days ago, Santana and Brittany stole Quinn Fabray's book and made Quinn feel like a fool for all their sly talk to her. Now Quinn has seen Santana and Brittany trading more-than-friendly kisses in the woods while skiving out on their chores and causing the whole circus to search for them. If Quinn had a mind for revenge, she could tell Brittany and Santana's secrets to Ken and Mrs. Schuester on the spot—and who knows what they might do to Brittany and Santana then.

Santana feels trapped, like Edmond Dantès in his prison cell, and very nearly woozy from it.

She pictures Ken and Mrs. Schuester reporting her misconduct to Mr. Adams and importuning him to fire her from the circus—for impropriety, for disregarding rules, for lollygagging, for something. What would Mr. Adams say if he knew that someone like the so-called Santana Puckerman had kissed someone like Brittany Pierce? What would he say if he knew that Santana loved Brittany with her whole heart? There isn't room in the sideshow for Santana's kind of anomaly.

("SANTANA LOPEZ: The Girl Who Loved the Knife Thrower's Daughter.")

What if Brittany gets into trouble over this? What if Brittany's father decides to punish her for disappearing again? Santana feels positively ill.

Though she can hardly stand to look at Quinn, Santana also can't stand not to look at Quinn, either. Brittany seems to share Santana's impulse. They both stare at Quinn, desperation written all over their features, wordlessly begging her to please keep their secrets.

For their staring, Mrs. Schuester, Ken, and the supes look to Quinn, too. For a long while, everyone remains silent—so silent, in fact, that Santana can hear the soft pitter of the rain as it hits the ground and birdcalls way out in the distance. Her whole chest tightens, and she stands statue still. Quinn glances between Santana and Brittany, mouth open.

_Please._

"They—," Quinn starts, her voice weak and somewhat strangled. She finds Mrs. Schuester's eyes and steels herself, settling into her response. "They went exploring in the woods, but they got trapped on the far side of the creek," Quinn says finally, gesturing in the direction of the water.

It's a slow and calculated lie, and one that Quinn speaks very carefully, crafting her story as she goes. Santana daren't hope for too much. She holds her breath, waiting for Quinn to either save her and Brittany or twist the dagger in them.

Quinn continues, nodding to herself, as if to corroborate her tale, "The water rose when it started raining. They only just were able to cross back to the circus side of the forest. They didn't mean to dawdle. I only found them after I heard them shouting."

Quinn didn't fink them out.

(Does that mean that Santana can breathe?)

For the briefest instant, Quinn's walls seem not to exist. Her eyes appear unguarded, open like a book page. If only Santana could read it—

"What were you doing, crossing the creek in a rainstorm? Don't you ever think, or is your head really as empty as everyone says it is?" Mrs. Schuester asks in a scathing tone, rounding on Brittany again.

Brittany gives the smallest shrug. "We wanted to start up the bucket brigade," she says in what must sound like a serious tone to everyone else but in a way that sounds small and hurt as Santana hears it.

(Brittany wears her blank joking face, but she isn't joking at all.)

Santana will be damned again if six mouths don't fall open all at once for Brittany's non sequitur. Mrs. Schuester looks scandalized, and Ken audibly grunts; even Quinn, who's cleverer than the rest of them, seems thoroughly baffled. From his place in the brush, Finn mouths out the words _Bucket brigade?_ like he's never heard them paired together before in his life.

(For the first time, it occurs to Santana that Brittany uses her little brilliant backtalk jokes to fend off anyone who gets too close to her and keep them at a distance.)

(Is Santana really the only person Brittany doesn't confound with her funny talk?)

(Suddenly, Santana feels sad and mostly knows why; Brittany Pierce is so, so wonderful, and everyone should realize it—even and especially Brittany Pierce herself.)

Mrs. Schuester glares between Brittany and Santana, looking as furious as if she suspects them of plotting murder against her. If Santana didn't know better, she would say that Mrs. Schuester wanted her and Brittany to incriminate themselves in her presence.

Despite what Mrs. Schuester wants—or perhaps to spite it—Santana focuses all her energy on keeping a straight face, not wanting to give anything away. It isn't as though Santana and Brittany meant to cause trouble crossing the creek and climbing the hill anyway. Puck told Santana to enjoy her day, and she simply obeyed him, that's all. She and Brittany didn't intend to hide from their work or to cause anyone to worry for them. They weren't making mischief, or at least not purposefully.

Santana bites her lip and waits for Mrs. Schuester to pronounce her verdict.

After what seems like an eternity, Mrs. Schuester sniffs. "Fine!" she says. "As long as you're both still in a fit condition to work, I suppose it doesn't matter why you went across the creek anyway. Just hurry along to the mess pit, and eat your lunch before Ma Jones feeds it to Mr. St. James' tigers! And be quick about it, too! I have work for you once you finish your meal. Don't lounge about, either! And no more sneaking away!"

She wags her finger at them and then hitches up her skirt to go.

"Come on, Ken!" she snaps, as if calling a dog to heel.

Ken looks thoroughly annoyed, both at Mrs. Schuester and at Brittany and Santana, and also like he wants to say his bit before he goes. He opens his mouth in preparation to damn Brittany and Santana to seven different Hells each, but then Mrs. Schuester snaps for him again. He closes his mouth, conflicted between his natural impulse toward rottenness and his natural impulse toward being a loathsome little sycophant.

After a half-second of deliberation, he chooses to follow Mrs. Schuester.

"Coming, ma'am," he mumbles. As he and Mrs. Schuester pass by the supes still standing in the brush, he blushes but then quickly buries his shame beneath sheer gruffness. "Hup to it, fellas! Come along!" he barks, eager to yell at anyone, even if not the persons he would prefer.

Finn, Shane, and the other supe stir from their places and trail after Ken and Mrs. Schuester, exiting the wood. Though none of them seemed particularly pleased to play his part in the search party with which to begin, none of them seems particularly pleased to go back to work in the white city with Ken and Mrs. Schuester now, either.

Gradually, Mrs. Schuester, Ken, and the supes disappear from sight. More gradually still, the sounds of them crushing through the underbrush fade from hearing. Soon only Brittany, Santana, and Quinn remain in the wood beneath the soft rush of the rain, each one of them still motionless on her spot.

Quinn didn't fink them out, and Santana can hardly believe it.

Santana meets eyes with Quinn from across the way, curious down to her core as to why Quinn would be so decent to her and to Brittany when they've scarcely said two kind words to Quinn since they first met her in Worthington.

They stole Quinn's book, and she lied to save them.

"Thank you for—," Brittany starts, but Quinn won't hear it.

The instant Brittany speaks, Quinn's walls reappear. Her body stiffens, and she seems to close, locked up like a keyed diary. A snarl curls her lips, and she takes a step back, glancing between Brittany and Santana as if they mean to harm her rather than simply express to her their gratitude.

Before anyone can say another word, Quinn turns on her heel and begins marching back in the direction of the circus camp, her skirts blustering after her, her pace military quick.

It's only as Quinn goes that Santana notices the reporter's ledger and pencil tucked at Quinn's hip under her belt and feels a strange pang of guilt for it.

(She knows why someone might need a forest to hide away from everyone who wouldn't understand.)

* * *

><p>Once Quinn quits the scene, Brittany and Santana do as well, knowing that they oughtn't to linger when Mrs. Schuester wants to put them to work as soon as possible after they eat. As they scamper through the wood toward the camp, clasped pinky-in-pinky, Santana can't help but feel as if she's left something unfinished; her body rings with impatient waiting, though for what, she can't say.<p>

Though Santana feels some guilt for causing a ruckus and some uneasiness for upsetting Quinn without meaning to do it, she mostly just feels glad to have escaped a punishment from Mrs. Schuester and Ken and giddy from what happened in the wood and on the hillside between herself and Brittany.

She knows she oughtn't to hope, but suddenly it seems she has so much to hope for.

Brittany keeps kissing Santana as though it's her job at the circus to do it. Santana can't hope that Brittany's eagerness to kiss her means that Brittany loves her in the same way that she loves Brittany, but the phrase _sweet on her_ keeps playing through Santana's mind, and Santana can't help but wonder if maybe Brittany feels a particular affection toward her. Girls don't fall in love with other girls, but can they fall into liking with them?

Santana knows she oughtn't to allow herself to think such wonderful things, and especially not regarding someone as unpredictable as Brittany Pierce, but ultimately her wishing wins out over her worrying. Though Brittany's behavior confuses Santana and trips up her reasoning at every which way—what is it that Santana's forgotten, again?—it also fills Santana with a lucky, careless sort of feeling.

After all, if Brittany wants to kiss Santana so much, why should Santana think anything but the best of it?

Without the forest canopy to cover them, Brittany and Santana can't avoid the rain. Heavy drops soak their clothing and cause the cocksfoot grass heads at their waists to droop down like the necks of worshippers in prayer.

The girls high step over the prairie, hurrying for shelter. Their skin slips where they touch, cold from the rainfall but still on fire below the surface.

As they draw closer to the white city, Santana can't help but gasp at the strange, ethereal beauty of the circus in the rain.

The storm drums out loud, battering percussion against the taut canvases of one-thousand tent-tops and slicks the earth with long, slate puddles between the alley rows. The sky overhead grumbles, thick-throated with thunder, and radiates an uncanny grayish green hue, unlike any sky Santana had ever seen in New York. Clouds cast an eerie pall over the big top, billboard borderline, and every structure Santana can see, and contort against each other, rolling over the prairies. Everything shudders under the barrage. Somewhere in the distance, Santana hears the tin-tin-tin of raindrops meeting hollow metal.

Though Santana cannot see him, she hears Methuselah heave a wail to the weeping heavens.

When she and Brittany enter the camp, they find it all but deserted, with hardly any members of the company out-of-doors facing the storm. Only as they approach the mess pit do they hear the sounds of voices. Only as they round the chuck do they encounter other living souls.

"I don't want to hear a word as to where you two fool children have been or what trouble y'all have gotten up to since last you brought your lazy behinds around to my kitchen!" Ma declares as soon as she catches sight of Brittany and Santana coming up beside her.

Raindrops cling to Ma's flossy hair like dew to a spider's web and curl down her round cheeks like the tears she would never cry. She stands with her hands on her hips, trusty wooden cooking spoon clenched in one fist, and shakes her head at Brittany and Santana like they're the sorriest people she's ever had the misfortune to meet. She appears considerably drier than Brittany and Santana do and Santana immediately sees why.

(Vaguely, Santana registers how beautiful Ma looks under the gloom.)

Though Santana hadn't realized it was possible before this moment, the mess pit stands transformed at Ma's back, with the blue canopy that usually overhangs the table unfurled and fastened between its two usual poles and two freestanding poles located on either side of the pit just beyond the mess hearths.

Everything in the kitchen except for the chuck wagon itself occupies the space underneath this new makeshift pavilion. The ground below the canopy appears somewhat damp, probably because it took the supes who let it out a moment to stretch out the canvas after the rain started, but Ma's kitchen seems relatively dry otherwise.

Ma's kitchen girls huddle around the fire, working as diligently as they would if there weren't a thunderstorm overhead of them. White-gray smoke curls up from the fire, collecting under the canopy and causing the girls to cough as they stir a pot here or a Dutch oven there. The dueling scents of wet petrichor and dry smoke mingle in the air. A gloomy shade pervades under the canopy, casting everything in long shadow, and rain cascades off the edges of the sagging canvas in droves.

"Mrs. Schuester said we were supposed to eat lunch and then go help her," Brittany mumbles.

Ma Jones rolls her eyes. "So I've been calling for you all day, and now she gets your help? The Lord is testing me with that woman," she mutters, turning her back on Brittany and Santana to march over to the chuck through the rain.

(Brittany and Santana grin at each other once Ma can't see them.)

(It occurs to Santana that Ma Jones likes a good nuisance every once in a while.)

Ma returns from the chuck wagon a second later carrying two fully-prepared bowls brimming with soup in her hands, still rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath. She shrugs a shoulder for Brittany and Santana to follow her to the table, and they do so. Ma sets the plates down on the tabletop and produces two spoons and two biscuits from her apron pocket, offering them to Brittany and Santana with another disapproving shake of her head.

"Remember," she warns. "I don't want to hear no jawing out of either of you. You're to eat your lunch, wash your bowls, and skedaddle out of my kitchen before I decide to put you to work carving vegetables up for supper, never mind Mrs. Schuester filching you for her lazy self."

Both Brittany and Santana nod. "Yes, ma'am," they say solemnly.

Ma Jones shakes her head at them and wanders away, still muttering.

(Brittany and Santana grin at each other again.)

Eating lunch in silence proves far more difficult than Santana would have anticipated, mostly on account of the fact that being so immensely in love with Brittany seems to have the strange effect of making Santana insuppressibly giggly in Brittany's presence.

Ma set their plates down facing each other, so Brittany sits on the bench at the far side of the table with her back to the equestrienne tent while Santana sits on the bench closest to the fire, with her back to Ma Jones and her girls. As soon as they take their first sips of soup, Brittany crosses her eyes at Santana over their bowls, focusing in on the spoon at the center of her vision, acting as casual about it as if she had done so by accident. Santana splutters and nearly chokes on her broth.

_Stop it, Britt!_ she mouths, scarcely managing to stifle her laughter.

_Stop what?_ Brittany mouths back, wearing a wicked grin and rubbing her ankle up along Santana's under the table.

Santana jumps at the sudden contact between Brittany's skin, and her skin and thinks back to what she and Brittany were doing before the lunch bell interrupted them. For as good as Ma's savory soup tastes, Santana would gladly trade in her bowl just to go back to the hillside, even under the cover of rain. Brittany's touch is so light that it almost tickles, and Santana laughs for that, too, though she feels embarrassed for her own giddiness doing it.

Brittany stirs her soup and stares at Santana over her bowl, resting their ankles together, twined beneath Santana's bench. There isn't anything particularly funny about Brittany's comportment at the moment, but Santana still can't help but give a flighty chuckle; Brittany's attention draws it out of her, like a violinist's wrist movements draw song from his instrument.

"Britt!" Santana laughs, rocking forward where she sits, all dimples and dizziness.

(Two days ago, Ma Jones could hear Santana's love for Brittany in a song.)

(It will be a miracle if she doesn't hear it in Santana's laughter now.)

Brittany winks at Santana and starts to hum a melody that Santana doesn't recognize, her voice resonating against the tin tongue of her spoon; the tune sounds lively and sweet and flits like a little bird from branch to branch. Brittany has such a pretty voice.

(The prettiest voice.)

"I thought I told you two I didn't want to hear a peep out of either of you!" Ma shouts from across the mess area, brandishing her wooden spoon.

"You can hear that?" Brittany asks, surprised, and Santana's heart almost collapses at the way Brittany scrunches up her nose, revealing Brittany as both perplexed and impressed when Ma nods in confirmation.

When Brittany catches the expression upon Santana's face, her own mouth lifts into a soft, warm grin, brighter than anything under the rain. In the next second, Santana feels something brush her leg under the table, and she jumps again, though this time not as violently as before. She looks down at her lap to see Brittany's hand laying supine upon her thigh. Brittany wiggles her fingers, inviting, and when Santana glances at her from across the table, Brittany just nods.

_Hold my hand, darlin'?_ Brittany breathes, her lips forming a pretty, red pout. _Please?_

(The sweetest tugging feeling squeezes at Santana's heart.)

_Okay_, Santana pouts back, reaching down to link her right hand with Brittany's left under the table. The instant they clasp hold of each other, Santana feels at home.

"Now I know it's too quiet over there!" Ma grouses, stepping toward the table and eyeing Brittany and Santana distrustfully. "You two had best not be getting up into any mischief!"

_Are we too quiet or too loud?_ Brittany mouths.

For the next several minutes, Brittany and Santana can hardly stifle their laughter at all.

Honestly, it shouldn't be such a big thing, holding hands with Brittany under a table because, honestly, Santana has held Brittany's hand probably one-hundred times since joining the circus so far, but somehow it is a big thing—the biggest thing, actually. Santana feels so connected to Brittany even just by this little touch, like maybe that tug, tug, tugging at her heart has finally led her someplace where she can stay awhile.

(Forever.)

It only occurs to Santana midway through the meal that she and Brittany can hold hands while they eat without any trouble to it on account of her left-handedness and Brittany's right-handedness, and suddenly she feels extremely fond of them even though they didn't do anything to cause their good fit with each other aside from just existing as they are. Though Santana can't voice her thoughts, Brittany almost seems to intuit them, massaging over Santana's knuckles with her thumb, quite obviously pleased.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths.

_Hi_, Santana mouths back.

Santana's heartbeat pounds louder than the falling of the rain. Briefly, she considers what might happen if she were to simply mouth _I love you_ to Brittany from across the table over their bowls of lukewarm potato dumpling soup. Without meaning to do so, Santana grins at the thought, suddenly silly with it.

(Something flutters inside her.)

Brittany catches her look and quirks an eyebrow and searches Santana's face, infinitely curious.

Whereas yesterday, Santana might have cowered under Brittany's attention, worried that Brittany might glimpse something in her that she hadn't yet made sense of for herself, today Santana actually takes a private delight in Brittany's interestedness and the way that Brittany appears so intent upon puzzling Santana out. Brittany has been a mystery to Santana for days now, but Santana doesn't think she's ever been a mystery to anyone before. She meets Brittany's eyes and winks at her.

Brittany blinks in surprise and then grins and grins and grins.

* * *

><p>About the time Brittany starts caddishly and comically wagging her eyebrows at Santana and Santana starts laughing so loudly that she startles Ma's kitchen girls—hens frightened from their roosts—Ma banishes Brittany and Santana from her mess pit, which is fine by them, considering that they had mostly finished with their lunches anyway.<p>

"Mrs. Schuester can have you," Ma gripes, shooing the girls out from under the blue canopy with her spoon. "I have half a mind to send you two to Mr. Evans to work as clowns with that woodenhead son of his, since y'all seem so good at making each other laugh. Y'all are the awfullest kind of crazy I have ever seen, and I don't need you fooling around my kitchen. Go on now! Get!"

By now, the rain has thinned out somewhat. Though the sky still grumbles with thunder, it appears more gray than green again, and the rain itself falls in thin drizzling strings instead of fat spates. The earth squishes beneath Brittany and Santana's feet, and Santana can only imagine what her grandmother might say about the mud sullying her toes and skirt. Even for all its messiness, the storm does somehow feel refreshing, though.

Brittany and Santana return briefly to Santana's tent to deposit Santana's shoes there before heading to the midway and the dressing tents beyond it.

"Mrs. Schuester is going to let us have it," Brittany says idly.

"How could she when we're so charming, though?" Santana shrugs, only mostly joking.

Lightning fissures the sky off in the distance, close to the horizon, but Santana finds that she doesn't especially mind it. Everything around camp seems so seamless and calm under the rain; any violence that could come from the storm feels far away and unthreatening, at the moment.

Though Santana had somewhat hoped that Mrs. Schuester would assign her and Brittany a chore that they could complete inside a tent, Mrs. Schuester has no such intentions for them.

Brittany and Santana enter the ladies' dressing tent to find Mrs. Schuester holed up near its back wall, shouting directions at her seamstresses as they sort through crate after crate labeled WESTERN and FRONTIER and MISCELL. while simultaneously sewing what look like dyed chicken feathers—blue and brown and muffled gold—to some sort of leather harness herself. Mrs. Schuester immediately fixes Brittany and Santana with the most insidious glare Santana has ever seen.

"I don't know what makes you think that you don't have to do chores like the rest of us," Mrs. Schuester snips through clenched teeth. "But if it happens again, I might have Mr. Schuester put in a word to Mr. Adams about the pair of you! Mr. Schuester has Mr. Adams' ear, you know. If you put one toe out of line—"

"What did you want us to do, Mrs. Schuester?" Brittany asks quickly.

It turns out that Mrs. Schuester wants Brittany and Santana to wash the circus linens—two full bags of them, each one probably weighing close to forty pounds—outside in the creek in the rain, and she wants them to do so quickly so that her girls don't have to do it themselves, no screw ups, mind you, missies.

Mrs. Schuester saddles Brittany and Santana with two washboards, a yellow and blue box of Watson's Matchless Cleanser Soap Flakes, a washing dolly, a wrapped square of Reckitt's Crown Blue, a knife to cut the bluing agent, and, of course, the two immense bags of linens themselves, and then directs the girls toward the creek, threatening again that she'll have words about them with Mr. Adams via Will if they dillydally even in the slightest from their task.

It's awkward going, once Mrs. Schuester turns them out from her dressing tent. Brittany carries one bag, Santana the other, and they share the rest of the washing equipment between them, the knife tucked at Santana's belt, the bluing agent cinched under Brittany's sash, the soap flakes balanced atop Brittany's bag, and the washboard and dolly slung over Brittany's shoulder. At first, Santana tries walking with her linen bag out in front of her, but once she realizes that she can't see her feet, she heaves it over her back, groaning under its heaviness.

"I didn't know wearing bricks was de le mode at the circus," she says.

Brittany laughs, though her voice sounds slightly squashed under the weight of her own haul. "I can carry yours if you like, darlin'," she offers.

(She isn't joking at all.)

Santana tries to say something practical to keep her heart from melting: "Maybe we could get the elephants to help us."

Brittany just grins, pleased as can be.

As per Mrs. Schuester's directions, Brittany and Santana head to a bend in the creek that borders the backs of the dressing tents rather than to the elbow of the creek they forded earlier today in the forest. This particular portion of the creek wends through a sparse spinney of trees. A bare row of young oaks and cottonwoods cordon it off from the camp proper but don't overhang the water.

The dwindling rainstorm overhead writes curlicue ripples upon the slow stream, which hardly even seems deep enough in which to fully submerge one's feet, though it does appear to deepen further back toward the forest proper. The current skims over a bed of flat, round rocks. Parched, yellow tall grass grows along the creek's banks. The creek flows ever so slightly downhill.

Santana and Brittany throw their bags down the instant they reach the edge of the water, out of breath and overheated despite the coolness of the day. Santana's back aches.

"Next time, we're definitely getting the elephants to help," Brittany pants, flopping down in the grass on her back and closing her eyes to the rain.

"I've never washed clothes in a creek," Santana admits, stooping over to lean against her own knees. "Abuela and I did the washing every Monday, but we always used a tub and hot water."

Brittany nods, sympathetic. "Well, the creek shouldn't be too different," she says gently, "as long as you don't let anyone's slacks wash away downstream."

Santana laughs, delighted with Brittany's cleverness, and sets down on the ground, cross-legged at Brittany's side. She smoothes her hair away from her face, taking a moment to catch her breath, counting out her own heartbeat, fast beneath her breastbone.

"You're beautiful, Santana."

Brittany speaks in her just-so way, still splayed flat on her back, her golden hair fanned out upon flatted golden grass all around her face, as long and light as sun rays. She lies perfectly still with only her eyes moving, tracing again and again over Santana's features, like she hopes to memorize them. When Santana looks at Brittany, a fleet flash of nervousness passes over Brittany's face—Brittany holds her breath, and Santana can see her doing it—but Brittany doesn't recoil and doesn't elaborate. Her ears pink and she waits for Santana to say something in response to her compliment.

For her part, Santana's heart resonates with Brittany's words, rung like a bell, and she sits stalk still, staring at Brittany with wide eyes.

Brittany stole her breath away.

No one has ever called Santana beautiful before and really meant it.

When he first hired her to the circus, Mr. Adams said that Santana was beautiful in her own way, but what he really meant to say was that Santana wasn't ugly, considering her background; he hardly intended his assessment as a compliment.

Santana's father often told Santana she was pretty when she was a little girl who ran to him all decorated in bows and Sweet Williams blooms, and Santana's grandmother sometimes said that Santana looked _muy linda_ with her hair done up in ringlet curls, but no one ever truly called Santana beautiful otherwise or just for herself, with no adornments to make her so—not in a way that counts.

Not until now.

Prior to leaving the bachelor cottage, Santana would sometimes stand in front of the long brass-framed mirror in her grandmother's bedroom and wonder if she was beautiful. In her own eyes, she just looked like herself, with dark eyes and dark hair and a little bit of Papa here, a little bit of Abuela there, and a little bit of someone else she never knew everywhere else, a mystery. Santana didn't dislike her own looks, but she didn't know whether she ought to love them either.

It was only after her father died and Santana first set out on the streets of New York with Puck that she realized she was too dark, wiry, and different to ever really be anyone's idea of beautiful.

Except that now, apparently, she is.

Even though one-hundred people have told Santana just how un-beautiful she is since she left the bachelor cottage, Santana's heart chooses to believe Brittany's lone voice telling her otherwise in an instant. Brittany has never lied to Santana before, after all. And Brittany wouldn't tell Santana something like that unless she truly meant it.

A golden, perfect warmth blossoms inside Santana, and suddenly she does believe that she is beautiful, just for Brittany saying so.

(Can love do that to a person? Make her into something that she's never been before?)

The most beautiful girl in the world thinks that Santana is beautiful, and Santana lets out a little flighty laugh because of it. She cradles the word Brittany said deep inside of her and tucks it away inside her locket heart along with wanting to dance and having a friend and her secret love for Brittany itself, intending to keep the word amongst the one-thousand other priceless Brittany-things she's collected since first joining the circus.

(Like secret lover's photographs.)

(Accepting someone else's generosity is just self-love written in quiet script.)

A nervous fluttery "Britt" is all Santana can manage to say in return to Brittany's compliment. Instantly, she wishes she had told Brittany she was beautiful instead.

Brittany stirs from her place in the grass and stands, smoothing out her dress and brushing the grass residue away from her skirt with both palms. Before Santana can say anything else, Brittany takes two steps to reach her and leans down, pressing a kiss to the crown of Santana's head, lips pushing, wet and soft, against Santana's hair.

When Brittany stands up, she simply says, "Let's wash those clothes now, darlin'."

And, all of sudden, Santana wishes that she could say one thousand things at once.

* * *

><p>Brittany is right: washing clothing in a creek isn't so different from washing clothes in a tub at the bachelor cottage, which is just exactly the problem.<p>

Washday at the bachelor cottage was the worst day of any given week. It required that Santana and Abuela set their clothing and linens to soak in the tub overnight in the kitchen and then to rise before the sun to spend all the next day toiling up to their elbows in water, soap, and blue. Typically, they barely managed to complete all their work before Papa came around to visit them in the evening. After spending all day hunched over a washtub, Santana always ended her day exhausted down to her bones.

She quickly discovers that things aren't any different at the circus.

To start off, Brittany steps into the creek and starts collecting flat, round stones, one in either hand. When Santana asks Brittany what she's doing with the stones, Brittany explains that she intends to build a small barrier to keep the laundry from floating downstream from them. She shows Santana what she means, crouching down over the water near the bank and arranging her two stones, one atop the other, forming a crude tower which causes the stream to part around it, creating white runnels along its rounded sides.

"That's so clever, Britt," Santana marvels, stepping up along the edge of the water, watching, fascinated, as Brittany stacks more clacking stones together, gradually creating a low wall against the current.

Brittany's whole face turns pink, and her eyelashes flutter. "I just thought it would be easier if we could wash a whole bunch of clothes at once," she mumbles, unable to meet Santana's eyes.

(If Santana didn't know any better, she would think that no one had ever complimented Brittany's cleverness before.)

When Santana wades into the water and crouches down in front of Brittany, it feels as if she's stepped into some sort of dream. In silence, Santana collects stones of her own, adding them to Brittany's efforts. The stones' brown, slate, blue, and black tones run up against each other like fish scales, variegated and slicked. Brittany watches Santana without blinking and maybe even without breathing. Santana can hear her own heartbeat over the creek babble and the rain spatter.

(Is that Brittany's heartbeat, too?)

Her wrist brushes against Brittany's, wet skin on wet skin. Everything feels so intense, maybe for the quiet, maybe for the mounting charge that has run between Santana and Brittany all day. For the second time in as many hours, Santana wonders what might happen if she were to just tell Brittany the truth right now: _I love you_.

Yesterday, Santana had worried that the light in Brittany's eyes might extinguish in an instant, but now Santana wonders if Brittany wouldn't just tell her _All right, darlin'_ and continue on as always, still wonderful upon wonderful.

Santana can feel the confession slipping further and further down on her tongue, almost to her lips, about to spill over—

"I think this'll do," Brittany says, fitting one more stone into place, rocking back on her haunches to observe her and Santana's handiwork on the wall. She nods, pleased with what she sees.

For a second, Santana's head spins. She scrambles to say anything that isn't what she very nearly confessed; all she can manage is a stupid "Sure thing." She stands up on the spot, shaking the cobwebs from her mind.

(It takes a full minute before her heartbeat returns to an even pace.)

Building the wall proves to be the easiest part of her and Brittany's job, as it were.

Upon opening their bags, Brittany and Santana discover an even mix of street clothing, costume pieces, and linens, including the mess pit table cloth. Brittany explains that everyone in the circus may put in for laundry as often as he likes, as long as he contributes one penny from his paycheck to the camp laundry fund whenever he would like to have clothes laundered, so as to allow Mrs. Schuester to purchase the necessary soap and blue.

"I'll have to ask Puck if we've paid our dues," Santana notes, scrunching up her nose at her own costume, which could certainly benefit from a washing sooner rather than later.

"Daddy usually pays ours every two weeks," Brittany shrugs.

Santana can't imagine that Puck cares very much about keeping his duds freshly laundered, as long as he doesn't do anything special to dirty them between regular washdays. Might it be next week before she can put her skirt and blouse in for a cleaning, then? Santana shudders to think what her grandmother might say about the wait.

With their retaining wall in place, Santana and Brittany heft an armful of clothing each over to the small, makeshift inlet and submerge the clothing under the water, using the washing dolly to thoroughly saturate the lot. Santana's grandmother always taught her that one can only launder clothes using hot, boiled water, but as neither Mrs. Schuester nor Brittany seems to have any qualms about washing the circus linens in the cold creek, Santana doesn't fuss about it and happily follows Brittany's lead, stirring the shirts, slacks, skirts, and blankets from the first load under the water with the dolly dowels.

Once Santana and Brittany feel satisfied that they've soaked the clothes, they mix in some of Watson's Soap Flakes, sprinkling the box over the inlet until it snows upon the water.

Santana has not-so-secretly hated laundry soap since childhood because the lye bites at her skin and turns her hands pink and itchy after every washday. Her grandmother always used a brand called C.W.S. White Windsor Soap, imported from England, and Santana always griped that C.W.S. stood for Caustic When Soaking.

Santana tells Brittany as much now, and Brittany pauses from her work, intrigued.

"What does caustic mean?" she asks in her artless way.

"It means that something burns or stings."

Brittany considers Santana's answer for a moment before asking, "Did Abuela fuss at you for saying that?" A smile tugs at the corners of her mouth and fully lights her eyes.

(Santana feels a little flutter hearing Brittany say _Abuela_ instead of _your grandmother_.)

"Well, I said it in English, so she didn't understand what I meant," Santana admits, shrugging. "It isn't a very good joke in Spanish, actually."

It surprises Santana how fervent Brittany looks in response to what Santana says, like Santana couldn't be more interesting than she is or more wonderful, either. Brittany repeats Caustic When Soaking twice more under her breath, shaking her head at something that seems neither here nor there. She gives that little silent laugh of hers, and Santana feels suddenly feels very pleased with herself.

(What is it Santana's forgotten?)

(Will wishes come true if you're patient with them?)

As it turns out, Watson's soap doesn't seem nearly as strong as C.W.S., which delights Santana, though she does somewhat wonder if Watson's works as well as C.W.S. does for the difference. Of course, Santana knows better than to ask Mrs. Schuester concerning the quality of the soap of choice or to suggest that Mrs. Schuester consider purchasing the more expensive import instead. What the circus has will certainly do, and so Santana uses it without making any complaints.

It requires a great deal of physical effort to properly soap the clothes. Brittany balances on the stones underfoot, standing in the creek, and stirs the washing dolly with her whole body, swiveling to mix in the soap with the running water. Given the permeability of the stone wall, the soap doesn't stay frothy for very long, diluting after a few minutes until Brittany pouts, and Santana pours in more into the stream.

Honestly, Brittany isn't a very careful worker and spends far less time soaping the laundry than Santana might do if she were tackling her chores alone, but Santana doesn't really mind Brittany's approach and honestly wonders if Brittany's way isn't better than her own on the whole.

(Since arriving at the circus, Santana has begun to wonder if Abuela didn't instill too much caution in her about everything.)

Brittany hums while she stirs and sticks out her tongue between her lips, concentrating on her efforts. Vaguely, Santana thinks that she could watch Brittany do anything in the world and never tire from it.

Once Brittany has sufficiently soaped the clothing, Santana collects several articles from the water and carries them back to the creek bank slung over her arm. After collecting one of the two washboards, she sets down in the grass and begins the arduous work of pressing the water out of the clothes, bearing down with all the strength in her upper arms to squeeze each item dry. In the meanwhile, Brittany takes to soaking and soaping yet more articles from the bag.

Drying clothing on a washboard may well be one of the most arduous tasks ever invented—or at least it seems so to Santana. Her fingernails and knuckles slip and grate along the washboard after every few wrings, and sweat forms on her brow despite the coolness of the day. She breathes heavily, and the muscles along her ribs strain with her efforts.

The only saving grace to the task is Brittany, who performs her own work so cleverly and talks so sweetly to Santana all the while doing it that she almost distracts Santana from hating the washboard altogether.

"Rachel and I always used to have to wash the linens when we were younger," Brittany says, pushing down a particularly bouffant pair of bloomers under the current with a sharp stab from the washing dolly. "But washing the linens is much better with you. You don't boss me," she explains.

"I wouldn't know how to wash the linens at the circus if it weren't for you," Santana points out.

Brittany smiles. "I think you'd do all right, darlin'," she demurs, but Santana can't help but notice the way her cheeks pink at the compliment. A pause. "Everything's better with you around anyway."

The words leap to Santana's tongue before she can stop them. "Brittany, I—," she blurts, only just stopping herself before she spills her secret. She claps a hand over her mouth.

(Silence.)

(Oh God.)

Brittany fixes Santana with the queerest look, but doesn't push her to finish her sentence. Instead, Brittany shakes her head as if she's the one with cobwebs. Santana wishes she could explain herself, but she has nothing to say except what she can't say at all.

The girls toil diligently for over two and a half hours, soaping and wringing the first load and then bluing its whites and wringing them out again, before moving onto the second. As they work, Santana explains the ins and outs of washday at the bachelor cottage to Brittany, including all of her grandmother's little proverbs for remembering how to do various household tasks the proper way.

"They rhyme in Spanish," Santana says lamely after her translation for _lo barato sale caro_ fails to convey any of its original cleverness to Brittany.

"Well, then tell them to me that way," Brittany says.

Santana scrunches up her brow. "But wouldn't that be rude, speaking Spanish in front of you when you don't speak it yourself?" she asks in her smallest little Brittany-voice.

For the briefest instant, Brittany wears an unreadable look, but then she simply smiles kindly. "I like the way it sounds," she says. "And even though I don't know the words, I know your voice and how you mean the words, mostly."

Santana can never refuse Brittany anything, really, and especially not when Brittany makes such thoughtful points. Santana draws a breath before slipping into her grandmother's Spanish.

_"A quien madruga, Dios le ayuda."_

_"Poco a poco se anda lejos."_

_"El trabajo compartido es más llevadero."_

_"Si quieres ser bien servido, sírvate a ti mismo."_

_"Más vale ser cabeza de ratón que cola de león."_

Brittany listens with rapt attention, cutting off bluing flakes from the Reckitt's block with deft and practiced knife strokes, the way one would slice sections from the flesh of a ripe apple. The flakes fall like morning glory petals onto the creek, alighting gently upon the soaking white clothes, but Brittany scarcely pays them any mind. Instead, she stares at Santana, transfixed. Her pretty lips part, though she wears no particular expression—only fascination deep behind her eyes and a silent sort of reverence across her whole countenance. She watches Santana's mouth move as if she intends to memorize its every new shape and statement.

For Brittany's attention, Santana feels the same sort of frenetic excitement tittering inside herself as the kind that seems to snake through nature for the storm. It seems different being with Brittany today than it has ever before.

Briefly, Santana considers saying what she wanted to say earlier but in Spanish now, slipping in her secret amongst so many tired _dichos_, like a card-sharper might conceal a heart within his suit of spades.

_(Te amo, Brittany. Siempre.)_

And yet, even in another tongue, Santana can't dare to breathe it out, lest Brittany somehow understand. After all, Brittany says she knows Santana's voice. Would she hear the secret laced in with Santana's whisper?

"You talk so prettily," Brittany says fervently.

(Santana wonders if she'll ever really talk prettily enough.)

After a while, the girls lapse into companionable silence, in just the same way as they have while sewing or performing other chores about the circus before. The world around them seems boundlessly green, almost iridescently so underneath the cloud cover, like the clouds trapped sunlight in-between themselves and the earth just as they rolled into Onawa—sunlight that lingers there now, out of place and glowing underneath the gloom. Wind rustles the yellow grass and tickles the leaves in the trees.

For the first time, Santana truly understands how easy it might be for a prince to fall in love with the cinder girl toiling at chores if only the cinder girl were as beautiful as Brittany, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed under such a sullen storm. Santana thinks back to what happened between herself and Brittany on the hillside and suddenly wants nothing more than to kiss Brittany again and to feel Brittany's touch. Santana's hands still upon the washboard, and she draws a shuttering breath.

And then.

The first time water splashes against Santana's cheek, she doesn't expect it, she doesn't dodge, and she ends up spluttering.

The splash comes as such a surprise that it takes Santana two full seconds to even realize what happened to her.

Brittany Pierce splashed her!

Brittany couldn't seem more pleased with herself for her efforts. She wears a wily expression. When Santana recovers, glaring at her, Brittany smirks, utterly remorseless. "You'd better be careful, staring like that all the time, darlin'," Brittany says plainly.

Santana flushes, caught. Brittany noticed her staring? Does that mean that Brittany noticed why Santana was staring, too? Can Brittany see the love behind Santana's eyes—the ceaseless and helpless way in which Santana adores everything she does? If Brittany can see it, does she not like it? Is that why she splashed Santana, to make her stop?

Oh God.

"Better be careful of what?" Santana stammers, not certain she really wants to know Brittany's answer.

When Brittany speaks, she does so with a funny twinge in her voice, "You'd better be careful or someone might start to think I make you crazy, darlin'."

Santana's heartbeat picks up. Oh God. What does Brittany mean by that? Santana scrambles to say anything so as not to incriminate herself. Her cheeks burn with embarrassment. Why couldn't she just mind herself better?

"W-who might think it, BrittBritt?" she asks, making a feeble attempt at a joke. "There's no one here to see but us."

Now it's Brittany's turn to blush, and she does so furiously, glancing away from Santana and down at the stream as if she's suddenly spotted something very important swimming beneath the current. She draws a shaky breath.

"I might, darlin'," she mumbles.

(Santana doesn't think she's ever heard a person sound so simultaneously bashful and forlorn all at once.)

Brittany's eyes cloud over, and she fidgets, stirring the washing dolly listlessly in front of herself just to have something to do with her hands. She glances at Santana but can't seem to say anything else.

For a brief second, Santana's brain all but shorts out, blown like a faulty electric light. Her heart skips a full three beats inside her chest, and she very nearly drops the wet shirt she holds between her hands into the current from her shock. It sounds an awful lot like Brittany just said—but she couldn't have meant—but did she mean—?

(Oh what is it Santana forgot? It seems so terribly important just now.)

When Brittany splashes Santana for the second time, it's not just a spatter but a full-on deluge, powerful enough to stir Santana to her feet.

Santana spits and coughs, shocked into stupidity for the second time in as many minutes. She gapes at Brittany, wide-eyed, and finds Brittany grinning her most devious grin, still crouched with her hands near the water, obviously pleased with her success, the washing dolly toppled over, useless at her side. Water drips from Santana's hair and eyelashes, dribbling down her cheeks and chin. She really can't believe that Brittany would just soak her like that.

"Brittany!" she gasps, eyebrows all the way up by her hairline. "You can't! I'm still wearing my costume—!"

Brittany grins, positively wicked.

"I don't mind," she says.

The third time Brittany splashes Santana, Santana has no choice but to retaliate.

She doesn't wait for the water to clear from her eyes before she charges deeper into the creek and slaps up her own water in Brittany's direction. Brittany shrieks, delighted, and scrambles away, laughing throatily, mostly evading the spray.

"No fair being sore, darlin'!" she giggles, mock-horror written over her smiling face. She jostles over the creek stones, uneasy. "You got me back! Truce! Truce!" She holds up her hands in front of herself to fend Santana away.

"Uh-uh!" Santana protests, narrowing her eyes. "You splashed me and now you have to suffer the consequences, Brittany Pierce!"

If there have ever been a sillier pair of people in Onawa, Iowa than them, Santana could scarcely believe it.

She darts toward Brittany, using the wet shirt still twisted over her hand to slap up another wave of creek water in Brittany's direction. At the same moment, Brittany splashes up a wave of her own. Both girls end up spluttering, their mouths wide open in stupid grins. The tug, tug, tug in Santana's chest feels wild and animated. Brittany has very nearly soaked Santana all the way through her clothes, but Santana couldn't feel happier for it.

Brittany dodges further up the creek back toward the forest but then skids to a stop, nearly teetering over.

"Whoa! A hole!" she says, performing as strange, wobbling dance so as not to fall into what must be a divot under the surface of the water.

Santana seizes the opportunity and tosses as much water on Brittany as she can, drenching her. Brittany's eyes widen, and she spits water from her mouth.

"Oh, no you don't, darlin'!" she warns, turning the tide of the water war to give chase to Santana.

The girls begin to chase each other around the creek, Santana snapping the shirt in her hands at Brittany, trying to douse her with it, and Brittany kicking up water in Santana's direction with every high step over the clattering creek stones. They both laugh, stupid and unencumbered.

(Somewhere, the child Santana, who hadn't any playmates at the bachelor cottage and who often craved for silliness living a life so somber, feels unspeakably grateful to her older self for falling in love with Brittany Pierce.)

After just a few minutes, both Brittany and Santana stand thoroughly soaked, with water dripping down their hair and saturating their clothing. They both shiver slightly from the cold, but neither one of them relents.

Santana has Brittany trapped just in front of their stone wall and flicks the wet shirt at her threateningly.

"Just surrender," she says, smirking.

(She feels something kindled all over her, deep inside, like a lamp she carries with her always.)

"Me surrender?" Brittany teases. "Darlin', I've got you right where I want you!"

At that, Brittany darts forward, her arms extended as she attempts to tackle Santana, and Santana yelps, dodging away. She has never wanted someone to catch her and not to catch her so much all at once before in her life. Brittany's fingertips brush Santana's belt, and Santana spins. For a split second, she has her back to Brittany, and then she hears a mighty splash.

When Santana gets her bearings again, she finds Brittany sprawled out on all fours in the creek, spitting up water and the last traces of Watson's soap suds, scrambling to her feet, her whole body even more soaked than it was before.

"Oh God, Britt! Are you all right! Did you skin your knees—?" Santana gasps, covering her mouth with her hands, horrified as she supposes that Brittany must have hurt herself slipping over the slick stones.

Her compassion proves her undoing.

Brittany leaps to her feet and barrels forward, catching Santana around the waist and lifting her up in a single motion. Santana's feet leave the water, and she shrieks, exhilarated. In her side vision, Santana glimpses Brittany wearing the brightest, giddiest smile she thinks she has ever seen.

Both girls laugh, Brittany's forearm tucked just under Santana's ribs, holding her tight, and Brittany's starts to spin, turning tight circles in the water, both her and Santana's skirts twirling around her legs, their cheeks pressed up close to each other, with Brittany's front to Santana's back and both of them giggling like fools.

Santana lifts her knees so as not to catch her feet on the stones, laughing so hard she can barely breathe, and especially not with Brittany holding her so tightly around the middle. "Britt! Stop it! I'm getting dizzy!" she screams, only half-serious, a giggle punctuating her every other word.

Brittany presses a sopping, smiling kiss to Santana's cheek and slows to a stop, brushing Santana's feet through the water like oars before setting Santana carefully down, making sure that she doesn't slip. They both reel, lightheaded, the world suddenly topsy-turvy around them. The horizon rollicks as if they were at sea.

Santana stumbles a bit.

"Truce, Britt. Truce!" she says breathlessly, not sure if she feels dizzier from spinning circles or from loving Brittany so much. She holds out a hand, both to offer her armistice and to still herself. The lit feeling burns inside of her.

(If the sky would stop dancing, Santana would give Brittany a kiss.)

* * *

><p>Following their water war, Brittany and Santana scramble to complete their chores, cutting several corners to finish the job in a timely manner. Brittany scrubs two clothing articles at once against her washboard, and Santana stuffs damp, clean linens indiscriminately into both bags without first sorting the white items from the colors. A slight wind blows in from the east, and both girls shiver, soaked down to their undergarments.<p>

"She'll skin us," Brittany says simply, eyeing their shoddy work as she and Santana gather up their things.

"But Ken's the one who does the skinning around here, Britt," Santana reminds her, still too happy from their horseplay to fuss over the impending tongue-lashing.

The girls heft their bags onto their backs, the knife, blue, soap box, washing dolly, and washboards already strapped into place, shared between the two of them. Immediately, Santana groans; the wet laundry proves even heavier than the dry laundry did. The bag Santana carries must weigh at least sixty pounds now, for all the extra water.

(Maybe it would be a smart idea to enlist help from the elephants.)

Neither Brittany nor Santana can much manage to talk on their way back to the dressing tents, for their heavy breathing and the sheer effort of shouldering their bags along. They have to stop twice on their way, and by the time they reach the back flap to the ladies' dressing area, neither one of them feels cold anymore in the least. Sweat drips from Santana's brow, and her back aches as if it will break.

Mrs. Schuester seems indifferent to the strenuousness of their task; she doesn't even bother to look up from her work when Brittany and Santana hail her inside the dressing tent, still hunched under the bags.

"Just put the things over there," she directs, waving flippantly toward a corner with her scissors. "My girls will have to set up a laundry line in here to dry everything as long as this dratted storm keeps up anyway."

"Yes, ma'am," Brittany and Santana pant.

The raggedness of their breathing seems to catch Mrs. Schuester's attention. She looks up from her work for the first time since Brittany and Santana appeared and doesn't seem to like the sight that greets her. Her brow furrows. "You're both dripping wet!" she snips, as if she expected something different, given the rainstorm. "You really shouldn't go about in wet clothes! You'll catch cold and die of it!"

"Yes, ma'am," Brittany and Santana agree.

Mrs. Schuester tut-tuts at the girls, rolling her eyes as if they're a helpless case. "Go change out of those wet skirts at once!" she orders. "I can't have you dying from pneumonia when we can hardly manage all the work around here as it is, being so short-handed."

"Yes, ma'am," Brittany and Santana consent, too spent to mind how very little Mrs. Schuester seems to care about them as anything other than cheap labor.

Though it doesn't thrill them to leave the dryness of the dressing tent, they don't much mind quitting Mrs. Schuester's presence, as her crazy eyes seem even crazier than usual today. They exit the tent through the front flaps and immediately start in the direction of Santana's tent, linked together by the pinky fingers.

"I don't have any extra clothes except my costume," Brittany mumbles, "and I'm not allowed to wear that unless I'm doing a show because it's white and gets dirty so easily."

Santana doesn't even have to think before she offers. "You can wear some of my clothes," she says. "I have some extra that I haven't worn since getting to the circus, really." When Brittany grins at Santana like no one has ever treated her so kindly before, Santana feels obliged to add, "I don't want you to catch cold, BrittBritt."

She draws Brittany's hand up near her lips and gives Brittany's knuckles a kiss.

* * *

><p>Much to Santana's delight, they find Santana's tent unoccupied, with Puck nowhere around. In his absence—and beyond Ma Jones and Mrs. Schuester's nagging—Santana and Brittany suddenly have the whole afternoon open to them to wile away as they please until suppertime. For their new freedom, ducking inside the tent becomes an adventure; Santana feels like Allan Quartermain entering Solomon's mines.<p>

Even with the flaps drawn closed after them, it isn't so dark inside the tent that Santana and Brittany can't see, though it is decidedly gloomy and not as stuffy as usual. Rain patters hard against the canvas roof overhead, and, for some reason, the noise causes Santana to feel as if she and Brittany are the only two people at the circus, just them and the storm and nothing else nearby.

"Thank you," Brittany says suddenly as Santana kneels beside her valise to scrounge out some dry clothes for them to wear.

"Don't thank me just yet," Santana replies, mirthless. "All I have is one outfit from New York and a nightdress, so we'll have to change and then stay in here until our regular clothes dry."

Brittany nods, not fussed, eyes tracing around the tent as if it is indeed the palace Puck made it out to be when he first showed the place to Santana upon her arrival at the circus. Her gaze lights on the corners and poles, mapping out the topography of the bed and discovering the metallic glint of the toilette set upon the vegetable crate.

(Brittany is the kind of person who revels in the quiet wonder of an empty room, Santana thinks.)

(Or a near-empty room, as it were.)

"Which would you prefer?" Santana asks, holding up the calico skirt she wore to the circus from New York in one hand and her lacy summer nightdress in the other. She tries desperately not to blush, making such a lame offering to Brittany, but fails.

(Santana used to own a half-dozen skirts and shirts before her father's lawyers seized the bachelor cottage after his death.)

Brittany points to the nightdress. "I think that'll fit me better," she says. "You and I aren't exactly the same shape, so."

Santana nods, draping both outfits over the stool in the corner. She rises, preparing herself for what comes next. Her left hand fumbles to her waist, fitting around her belt buckle. She spares Brittany a meaningful look. Brittany nods in response, reaching for her own sash. They both glance away from each other.

In a place that thrives on quick costume changes and which is built from thin canvas and sod cloth walls, modesty isn't really an option—not when it's show time and the knight sketch starts in five. Circus girls don't fuss about changing their clothing in front of one another, Santana knows.

It shouldn't really be a big thing for Santana and Brittany to undress in front of each other, then.

It really shouldn't matter.

But.

Santana can't help but feel strangely—almost wonderfully—nervous as she unhitches her belt and peels off her costume, piece by piece. Her stomach flutters, and a deep blush heats her skin, not just on her face but everywhere, as she discards her sashes here, her skirt there, dropping them unceremoniously to the grass and kicking them aside, freeing her limbs from the wet fabric.

Five minutes later, Santana stands stripped down to her knickers and cloth corset, feeling more self-conscious than she ever has before in her life. Her belt, sashes, and bangles lay in one heap near her ankles, her skirt and blouse in another.

Santana has never worn just her undergarments in front of anyone before today, except for perhaps her grandmother, who dressed her before she grew old enough to dress herself. She can't help but squirm, knowing that Brittany can see every dip and curve of her plainly now. She also can't help but squirm because she can see Brittany just the same, with Brittany clothed in nothing but a thin, white chemise, her tatty blue dress draped over the edge of the vegetable crate to drip dry.

Being undressed around Brittany shouldn't unnerve Santana so much, she knows—not when they're both ladies and still decked in undergarments, mostly covered except for bare arms and legs, really—but somehow even the very idea of seeing Brittany undressed flusters Santana until she finds that she doesn't know where to look.

Santana wants to watch Brittany to see if Brittany will watch her, but she also knows she oughtn't to stare at Brittany indisposed. Staring is usually rude anyhow, and, in this situation, it would be improper or maybe even immodest for Santana to do it. Santana finds it difficult not to stare at Brittany, though—not with Brittany so nearby and so impossibly interesting in all ways.

An incessant curiosity builds in Santana until she can't withstand it anymore. Her eyes move as if magnetized, tracing over Brittany's long, pale legs and up Brittany's waist to Brittany's breasts, only barely obscured behind a single layer of wet cotton, before flicking ever so briefly to Brittany's face. When Santana finds Brittany staring back at her, Santana's cheeks burn what must be one-thousand shades of crimson.

When she forces herself to meet Brittany's eyes, it surprises Santana to see Brittany acting similarly bashful to herself, a vivid pinkness in her ears, her gaze shifting back and forth from Santana's body to her face.

"We should, um—," Brittany mumbles, glancing at the grass, "right, darlin'?"

It takes a second for Santana to realize what she means.

"Oh! Yeah. Yeah, right," Santana agrees.

Briefly, Santana recalls her father and grandmother standing in the parlor, arguing concerning the lithograph prints Santana's father used to bring to her from the library. The prints depicted various famous paintings from the Renaissance and later. Santana's grandmother contended that a little girl oughtn't to look at so many nude portraits—_Es vulgar_, she said—but Santana's father insisted that it would do his daughter no harm to see the human body in its natural state, citing his own physician's training as evidence that the body was a beautiful and even divine machine.

(Santana remained hidden, seated upon her father's chair, pouring over _la Nascita de Venere_ with eager hands and eyes, finding more God in it than she ever did in her grandmother's tired saint stories.)

Now Santana clings to her father's practicality, trying to force the shame her grandmother taught her from her mind.

She and Brittany both meet each other's eyes again before turning to their respective corners to strip themselves of their wet underclothes. Santana feels hopelessly nervous and fumbles with the buttons at her waist. She tries not to look at or think about anything, but finds it impossible not to do so as she hears Brittany moving beside her, probably snaking her chemise up over her head, peeling the wet cotton away from her skin.

If Brittany can't hear Santana's heart beating, it's nothing short of a miracle.

Santana removes her corset and drops her knickers to the floor before crouching beside the stool in the corner to collect her and Brittany's dry clothing from it, swallowing against the strange parchedness that seems to have suddenly overtaken her throat.

"Here you go," Santana says, voice dry, offering up the nightdress to Brittany behind her without looking back to see Brittany at all.

When Brittany doesn't answer right away, Santana's curiosity starts to overcome her again. Against all her better judgment and her grandmother's lessons concerning modesty, Santana stands and turns to peek over her shoulder. She finds Brittany peeking back at her, pretty lips parted and color vivid upon her cheeks.

"Sorry," both girls say at once and then laugh, unceasingly nervous.

All at once, Santana finds that she couldn't stop herself if she prayed to her Devil to do it: her eyes sweep over Brittany's body, taking in the pale primrose plush of her skin, the sharp divots of her hips, the curve here, the flat plane there, all in a rush. Her breath catches behind her lips.

"You're beautiful," she blurts out.

As soon as the words leave her lips, she wishes she could die.

Her skin flares with heat, and she buries her face behind balled fists, pressing hard against her eyes until they almost hurt and she sees stars on black, hating herself for waiting to say such a forward thing until now when she meant to say it before, in a safe context beside the creek. In some ways, Santana might have done better confessing her love to Brittany than praising Brittany's beauty with both of them undressed. Santana can barely breathe.

"Oh, darlin'," Brittany says, a strange twinge in her voice.

In the next second, Santana hears Brittany sweep through the grass and then feels Brittany close to her, warm and breathing shallow breaths. Though Santana can't see Brittany through her fists, she couldn't be more aware of Brittany if she stared at Brittany again; she feels little shocks titter over her, like the lightning in the sky has somehow transferred to her skin. Brittany steps in, so wonderfully near.

(Not near enough.)

Brittany wraps her hands around Santana's wrists, coaxing Santana's fists away from her eyes, firm but insistent. When Santana dares to look at Brittany, she finds Brittany pouting out her lips, her expression utterly kindly but also tinged with a strange something else that Santana can't begin to name.

Gradually, Santana softens to Brittany's touch, and Brittany smiles as she does so, leaning forward to press the gentlest kiss to Santana's forehead, still holding Santana's wrists in her hands. Her lips against Santana's skin and her body so impossibly close to Santana's stir up the embers of the stoked fire feeling deep in Santana's belly.

All at once, Santana remembers licking over Brittany's knuckles at breakfast that morning and Brittany lying draped over her upon the hillside, painting her neck with kisses, before lunch.

She gasps.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

"Don't be scared, darlin'," Brittany whispers.

(It sounds like something else.)

Suddenly, Santana yearns to kiss Brittany so much that she can't help but tilt her head and lean in a bit, closing the space between them. Brittany's eyes look so soft and deep, ceaseless in their holy blue, and Santana feels as if she could fall into them forever and float easily away. She hangs on Brittany's breath but stops, running up against the edge of that same impassable wall which always restrains her in these white hot moments.

(Santana Lopez is the girl who always wants everything too much.)

(She waits.)

Brittany's hands slip from Santana's wrists, finding Santana's cheeks instead. Brittany pets the bones in Santana's face with long, reverent strokes.

"Please don't be scared," Brittany whispers again, and it sounds like a prayer and like something that Brittany has said before, a wish whispered up to shooting stars through the darkest pitch of perfect night.

When Brittany kisses Santana, she does so in little pecks down Santana's cheek, so light and quick that Santana thinks each one must weigh less than a moth's wing. Brittany dotes upon the hinge of Santana's jaw and over the slight curve in Santana's bone, all the way down to Santana's chin, where she linger at the corner of Santana's mouth, her kisses growing more insistent, searching.

(Teasing out a smile.)

As Brittany alternates between one side of Santana's mouth and then the other, Santana feels Brittany's breath and heat and waits and waits and waits, softening to Brittany's touch, gentling to it, until finally Brittany peels away.

"Open your eyes, Santana," Brittany says gently. Her hands ease away from Santana's cheeks.

(Santana hadn't realizes that she'd closed her eyes at all.)

Presently, Santana wants nothing more than the final kiss—the pressing of lips—which Brittany has withheld from her and feels that she would do anything to have it. She thirsts for Brittany's touch and hastens to comply with Brittany's directive, hopeful that Brittany will reward her when she does so. When Santana's eyelids flutter open, she finds Brittany standing a short distance away from her, back to the tent door, gaze trained to Santana's, body totally open for Santana to see.

From her very first look, Santana feels certain that no one has ever written a book about someone as beautiful as Brittany Pierce, for, if they had, Santana would have remembered every line and word of it.

(She forgets about the single withheld kiss in an instant.)

(Suddenly, no number of kisses will ever sate her again.)

Her eyes trace over Brittany's secret hard and soft places, the subtle pinks and long pale stretches. She learns Brittany's bones and curves and the clever breathing spaces where Brittany's body—where Brittany—rises and contracts, busy in the act of living, so perfectly herself and extant.

Unlike before, Santana allows her gaze to linger unabashedly upon Brittany's curves, knowing that Brittany does the same in regards to her, feeling somehow like she might never have the chance to look upon Brittany enough, though she might do so for a thousand years, like Sigurd upon his Valkyrie in her briar. Santana pours over Brittany's every inch, from Brittany's small, round breasts to the graceful sling of her hips, instantly loving Brittany's form as much as she loves everything else there is to love about Brittany altogether, down to Brittany's freckles and scars.

The scars catch Santana's attention.

Brittany bears two noticeable scars, one just at her right shoulder joint, the other midway down her left thigh.

The shoulder scar appears aged and whiter than the flesh around it, running beneath the surface of Brittany's skin, thin as parchment and nearly three inches in length. It curves around Brittany's muscle, like it's grown with her over the years.

The scar on Brittany's thigh nearly seems an opposite to the one on Brittany's shoulder, raised and pink, only recently healed; it wouldn't surprise Santana to learn that Brittany had gotten it sometime within the last year. It's smooth and bright upon Brittany's skin, slightly longer and thicker than the shoulder scar, though not by much.

Though Santana doesn't know how Brittany came by her scars or when, she has a guess and feels a pang from it. Even though the scars have healed over, Santana still hates the idea that something would cause Brittany pain—and especially that someone who was supposed to protect Brittany would do so, even by accident.

(Santana swears in her heart to always protect Brittany from now on.)

(She strokes the thread ring around her finger, absentminded.)

Brittany follows Santana's gaze, drooping when she realizes where Santana has focused her attention.

"The first one was my fault. It happened when I first started doing the act. I wouldn't hold still. The second one wasn't anybody's fault," she says simply, shrugging. "They don't hurt anymore," she adds after a moment.

(Santana wonders that a knife thrower should have so many accidents. In the past week alone, Santana has watched Mr. Pierce miss his mark almost more than he's made it.)

(Is there something wrong with the act?)

"Are you sure?" Santana recoils at how small her own voice sounds, how helpless. She takes a step closer to Brittany, overcome with wanting to check Brittany's wellness for herself, to kiss Brittany better, and to hold her safe.

"I promise," Brittany says, walking toward Santana, closing the space between them.

Before Santana can process what's happening, Brittany wraps her arms around Santana's waist and pulls her in tight, pressing their hips and ribs together. For a brief second, she rests her head upon Santana's shoulder in a laying-down-to-sleep way, or maybe like she's just reached shore after a long time spent swimming at sea.

Holy God.

The feeling of Brittany's skin over her own skin sends a shock through Santana, and she shivers, livened to her core. The stoked feeling in her belly flares warmer than before, and she draws a sharp breath, holding it, as her breasts and belly and nakedness press against Brittany's breasts and belly and nakedness, flush. Suddenly, Santana feels more aware of her own body than she ever has before in her life; she can sense every touch and brush and pressure all at once.

She lets out a little sigh just as Brittany turns to kiss her.

The kiss is both grateful and generous. It feels like Brittany keeping a promise to Santana that Santana never knew she'd made. Santana sinks into Brittany's lips, safe, breathless, and all aglow, her body quickened like an electric storm.

(The only adornment Santana still wears is her fraying, red thread ring.)

Brittany kisses Santana like she has one-million things to say but only one way in which to say them, deeply and urgently, her eyelids shuttering closed against the round of Santana's cheek. Brittany's mouth feels warm and tastes vaguely sweet as her tongue slips past Santana's lips, writing secrets where it will. She cradles Santana in her arms, the only thing keeping Santana tethered to the earth.

After a minute or maybe one-hundred years, Brittany pulls back, searching Santana's face. "Is this okay, darlin'?" she whispers, still holding Santana tightly around the middle.

"Yes," Santana says. Then, "Kiss me again, please?" dizzy with Brittany, her heart beating out love beneath her skin so fast and hard that Brittany must feel it. "Please just kiss me."

Brittany nods once before obliging Santana, sucking at Santana's bottom lip and drawing Santana's voice, raw and wanting, from the back of Santana's throat in a muffled keen.

"Darlin', you have to breathe," Brittany says, giggling against Santana's lips, buzzing them.

Santana hadn't realized she'd stopped.

"Sorry," Santana says stupidly, still drunk on Brittany's closeness and the fact that Brittany kissed her while they both stand naked in a tent. She smiles, suddenly bashful, and holds Brittany around the waist, the same way that Brittany holds her, so that their arms cross like halyard ropes supporting riggings on a ship.

When Santana flushes, she knows that Brittany can feel it.

Brittany hums a happy note, like there's nowhere she'd rather be than here, kissing Santana. She thumbs over the base of Santana's spine, enjoying her skin, and starts to walk Santana toward the cot, backwards, in a clumsy dance. The storm swells outside, a million raindrops at war with the tent roof.

"What are you doing, BrittBritt?" Santana grins, growing more accustomed to Brittany's touch.

Brittany kisses her dimple, quickly and through a cat smile. "Kissing you makes me dizzy, darlin'," she says sweetly, giggling again. "I wanna sit down to do it so my head won't spin so much."

If there has ever been a person more perfect than Brittany Pierce, Santana can't believe it. Something inside her chest squeezes, and she presses a kiss to Brittany's mouth, humming a sweet note into it. Santana shivers again as Brittany's body shifts against hers. Santana may have just discovered the most wonderful sensation in the whole world over.

Vaguely, it registers in the back of Santana's mind that she ought to feel strange, kissing Brittany with both of them unclothed and pressed up against each other—that she ought to feel guilty or frightened or confused—but somehow she can't fuss about it, not when Brittany feels like nothing but a homecoming and perfect in every way.

Santana slips her tongue past Brittany's lips, all of the beating, aching sensations she felt earlier today on the hillside returning to her in an instant. She holds onto Brittany at the arms, and Brittany works their mouths together, guiding them down onto the cot, Santana sitting nearest the head of the bed, Brittany near the foot. Santana can feel her heartbeat between her legs now and all over her skin.

She kisses Brittany sloppily, sinking down onto canvas, her nose crushed up against Brittany's cheek, her breath hot and slick upon Brittany's lips and chin. After a minute, Brittany shifts them, leaning down into Santana, pressing Santana against the bed.

Brittany fits her hips against Santana's, like she did earlier on the hillside, except that now her touch feels like perfect fire. She balances, kneeling over Santana on fours, her hair curtaining them from the heavy patter of the storm.

Something turns over inside Santana, and she whimpers, reeling. Her hands slide to hold Brittany's waist as Brittany hovers just above her, slicking her tongue behind Santana's ear and then, without warning, suckling at her earlobe.

"May I touch—?" Brittany asks, voice dark and raw like it was during the sunshower.

For the first time since Brittany reminded her to breathe, Santana feels fear. Brittany's touch felt so perfect on the hillside, but Santana worries that it might feel almost too perfect now. What if Santana can't stand it? Her heart beats out a quick drum cadence. She already feels like a string, tugged so taut that it might snap. Brittany's touch will either play or sever her.

Brittany has never done wrong to Santana before, though. And Santana trusts Brittany implicitly, more than she trusts herself or anyone else in her life. Brittany holds her so close, one arm supporting Santana under the small of her back, between Santana's skin and the cot, the other wrapped at Santana's side.

Santana feels so safe with Brittany holding her, like no one and nothing could harm her.

"Please," Santana says, slopping a kiss to the pulse in Brittany's neck.

When Brittany's hands stroke over her ribs, Santana feels as if wet, velvet ribbons swim inside her and she shudders to the touch. She's helpless, sprawled beneath Brittany, and still not entirely unafraid. Brittany kisses, open-mouthed, over the divot in Santana's throat and then her hands find Santana's breasts. Her thumbs trace along the curves, brushing over Santana's nipples. Santana gasps, as hot and wet as pooling candle wax at her very quick.

Brittany keeps Santana close, lowering herself slowly down upon her until their breasts touch and their breaths adopt one rhythm. When their nipples graze each other, both girls draw sharp breaths at once; a jolt of electricity courses all over Santana's body, and she rocks her hips against Brittany on impulse. Brittany whimpers at the friction.

"May I touch you, Britt?" Santana breathes, asking for what she wants most in the world.

"You talk so pretty, Santana," Brittany grins, nodding eagerly and shifting her hair over her shoulder so as to allow Santana a plane to touch.

In the next second, Brittany props herself up on her elbow like she did upon the hillside, shifting her weight over Santana, who keeps her eyes locked to Brittany's, falling ever deeper into inimitable, tiger-flecked blue. Santana traces over Brittany's ribs with blind, eager hands. She runs her thumb over just the base of Brittany's breast first and then the swell, marveling at the plush.

Brittany is so much softer than she imagined, warm and just round enough for Santana to cup her hand under the curve of Brittany's bosom. Brittany sighs when Santana touches her, like she had waited for it all day.

"You feel nice, darlin'," she says, her pupils spreading dark over her eyes like spilled ink upon a tabletop. Her lips fall open, parted flower petals, and a flush blooms upon her chest and neck.

The compliment goes straight to Santana's core.

In that moment, Santana decides that she likes nothing more in life than making Brittany feel good.

She raises her second hand to Brittany's other breast. Slowly, in the same way that Brittany did to her, she traces her thumbs over Brittany's nipples, finding them peaked and waiting for her, stubborn to the touch. Immediately, Brittany's hips flinch, pressing down into Santana.

The wet ribbons inside Santana swim. She notes the change in Brittany's breath and the way Brittany shifts above her, sinking into the sensation.

"You're beautiful," she says again, stopping just short of what she means to say.

For a long while, she and Brittany just touch one another, their hands working over each other's flesh, feeling out the spaces between ribs and drawing circles over one another's nipples to the accompaniment of little gasping sighs. At one point, Brittany leans down, pressing her ear to Santana's heart. She listens for a full minute, and Santana holds her breath.

_I love you._

(She wonders if Brittany can hear it.)

When Brittany sits up fully, she draws a heart over Santana's heart with her forefinger—one wing against another wing. She wears a queer expression, and Santana brims with curiosity. How much does Brittany know? When Brittany kisses her in the next second, Santana doesn't have time to ask.

Strange how Santana's body can both soften and tighten at once, her lips turning sloppy and loose but the stoked feeling between her legs gathering and aching until she thinks that she might die from it. Santana rubs her hips against Brittany, and something nudges between them. A shock goes through Santana's whole body.

"Oh God!" she says.

And Brittany says "Jesus!" just at the same time.

The flipped copper penny feeling springs to Santana's heart, belly, and the pulse point between her legs, and Santana craves without knowing exactly what or even for what to ask Brittany. She clings to Brittany's body, still wrapped around her at the waist.

"Wow," Brittany says, laughing through nothing seems especially funny.

(Only wonderful.)

Brittany traces the line that runs between Santana's navel and the valley between Santana's breasts, down and up and down again. Santana feels Brittany's heartbeat, sporadic in her chest and forceful. Brittany's eyes flick between Santana's mouth and eyes, and Santana's body throbs with want.

"BrittBritt, please," she says, not quite sure what she needs.

Brittany knows.

She peppers kisses over the bridge of Santana's nose and at the soft, thin skin under Santana's eye, smoothing back Santana's hair. "Do you want me to touch you?" she asks in a quiet, querying voice, glancing to the juncture between Santana's legs. Afterwards, her eyes dance back and forth between Santana's, soft and deep and reverent. "I haven't ever touched anybody like that nor had anyone touch me like that, either, but you see and hear some things, growing up at the circus. I think I could make you feel real good. And I promise I wouldn't hurt you." She hesitates for a second. "I—I'd die first, darlin'."

For a split second, Santana wavers; she already feels as though whatever paper-thin divide that once separated her from Brittany has rent and peeled away, leaving her totally bare and open, not just divested of her clothing but of everything and all her secrets.

If Brittany asked her in this moment, Santana would confess her love to Brittany freely. She couldn't withhold it if she tried. Still, the very idea of feeling so close to anyone—let alone to the girl she loves so much—seems as big and inescapable as the sky over Tekamah once did though a train window. Santana shirks from the notion, wondering if she can survive peeling back that final layer, revealing the last secret bit of her heart.

(Giving it all over.)

(Santana's locket heart had already been Brittany's to keep, and now the key will belong to Brittany, too.)

Fear doesn't play the strongest strain in Santana's heart, though. For as much as Santana wants to keep her secret, she wants to give Brittany this gift more, to trust Brittany wholly and completely. Santana may not be able to speak the truth, but this gift she can give—and she can do so without regret.

"Touch me, please, Britt," she whispers, meeting Brittany's eyes.

The light that she finds there shines with all the right choices Santana has made since joining the circus. Brittany kisses Santana, fearless and deep, making and keeping more promises.

_(Tenemos un dicho: Santana la hija del Diablo se casa hoy.)_

Brittany sits up from Santana, rearranging her legs to fit alongside Santana's, sidesaddle, at the end of the bed. It's an awkward position, but Brittany makes it look graceful—makes it look more beautiful than Santana has ever seen. Brittany wears a primrose flush over her chest in lattices and rouge in her cheeks, steeped in below the surface. Her eyes are still mostly ink-dark but what small blue Santana can find in them shines out so much sweet something else that Santana almost can believe in wishing stars.

And then Brittany's hand slips down Santana's body, past her navel and her hips, steady and slow. And suddenly Santana fully believes in everything.

Brittany brushes over Santana's dark curls to find the wet velvet heat between Santana's legs, touching it cautiously at first, as if in a whisper. Even just such light pressure causes Santana's mouth to fall open.

"Is that okay?" Brittany says shyly, stilling her motion, and Santana can tell that Brittany worries that she's hurt her.

Santana wishes that she could reach Brittany's mouth to impress to Brittany with kisses just how okay the touch feels, to assuage her concerns for it. Since she can't—not with Brittany sitting up and so far away at the end of the cot—she settles for reaching for Brittany's free hand, the one that pinions her at her right hip, closest to where Brittany sits. Santana laces their fingers together and gives a slight squeeze.

Brittany seems to like that and relaxes slightly at Santana's touch.

"You can touch a bit harder, if you like," Santana says.

(She decides to hold onto Brittany for as long as Brittany holds onto her.)

With Santana's reassurance, a slight smile begins to tug at the corners of Brittany's mouth. A hint of usual wiliness glints behind Brittany's eyes as she makes an explorative stroke over Santana's core, moving from the low middle point and gradually traipsing higher up.

About halfway through the motion, Santana shudders and cries out, making a deep, animal sound unlike any she has heard break from her own throat before. A shock sprints over her whole body, and she sinks down, melting into the cot as if liquefied.

Brittany tenses beside Santana, and her hand stills again, lifting slightly from the nub she touched.

Santana misses the touch immediately and tells Brittany as much. "Right there is good, Britt," she gasps. "It's really good." She sounds slightly punch drunk to her own ears, almost giddy and on the verge of laughter. "You can touch there all you want," she says, squeezing Brittany's free hand again.

"Okay, darlin'," Brittany says, just so.

Her thumb rides over the spot again, and Santana's whole body responds to it, blooming to the touch. Santana can feel wetness between her own legs and knows that Brittany can feel it, too. She lets out a high, pitched sigh and opens her knees further apart on instinct. After a first few mapping strokes, Brittany starts to find a rhythm to her touch, her thumb roving from low in Santana's center always back up to that button.

It's very nearly too much all at once; Santana can sense so much and also not enough all at the same time. She watches Brittany's eyes change, untamed and boundless in a way that they've never been before, a quiet exhilaration overtaking Brittany's person.

Suddenly, Brittany is that fairy maiden in Malory, leading Santana away to a sleepless kingdom with no days or nights and only an endless summer.

Rain drums a thousand different cadences upon the canvas roof, and Santana feels inside and outside herself at once, caught up in the rhythm of Brittany's touch and the wild throbbing inside herself, attuned to Brittany's every motion.

The invisible string stretches tighter and tighter, and Santana's body shivers around Brittany's fingers. She wants deeply, like an ache.

"May I—?" she gasps. "Please, let me kiss you, Britt."

Without stopping her touch, Brittany leans down, her hair swathing Santana's neck and cheek, spun gold. It surprises Santana to count Brittany's heartbeat, faster than her own, in Brittany's breast. She hovers above Santana's lips for a second, steadying herself, before leaning down to press languid, hot kisses to Santana's mouth. The instant that she does so, her touch becomes freer and more wandering.

A coil tightens in Santana's stomach with every graze and touch. She kisses Brittany frantically, and Brittany's thumb slicks through Santana's heat, slipperier than before. Brittany adds a second finger to her motion, positioning her thumb over the _right there_ place while searching out Santana's other places with her middle digit. Her touch feels too-much-not-enough-everywhere, and Santana shakes from it, breathing in little gasps, trembling against Brittany's body, struggling to find a place to kiss here, a place to kiss there, until she can't even work her lips anymore.

(She rings all over like a song only in Brittany's key.)

Santana sinks into Brittany, so close that she thinks they might never part—or that if they do, she might die from it. Her heart batters out love against her ribcage, and her secret only scarcely conceals itself behind her every shallow breath. For the briefest second, Santana can't stand the brightness and closeness and tightness of it all. Her insides thrum.

Then.

"Santana," Brittany says, a benediction.

And at her word, Santana's whole self gives over, a final stroke from Brittany's thumb gathering and dispersing Santana all at once. A wave of the most intense pleasure Santana has ever felt looses the coil in her belly, and she lets out a cry—so unlike her usual voice—clinging to Brittany and squeezing tightly to Brittany's hand as she drops over some invisible precipice into a single blinding instant. Her legs jerk under Brittany, and she allows the wave to swallow her whole.

After it recedes, an aftershock titters between her legs and down her thighs.

"Brittany," she gasps, breathless, and Brittany presses kisses into her hair and along her ear.

It takes a minute or nearly two for Santana to open her eyes. She finds Brittany watching her, stroking her hair from her face, wearing the fondest, most careful expression that Santana has ever seen.

Brittany looks like a girl who's just witnessed a miracle, and not of the petty circus sort.

"Thank you for letting me take care of you," Brittany breathes, her whisper so quiet that Santana can barely hear it over the rain. She presses a gentle kiss to Santana's temple, lying up beside her, propped on one elbow.

"Thank you, Britt," Santana returns.

(It's almost just what she means.)

For a long while, they remain in silence, with Brittany tracing over the shell of Santana's ear and looking at her in that really, really seeing way that is Brittany's sole providence and seeming great delight. Brittany wears the softest little smile.

(Is she proud of herself? She probably should be.)

It's only after several moments that Santana notices that Brittany's heartbeat hasn't slowed down at all, though her own has, and realizes what she ought to say. Nerves flush through her but also an indescribable excitement.

"BrittBritt," she says sweetly, Brittany blushing at the name, "would you like me to touch you like that, maybe? It's the best feeling in the world, I think, and I—I'd like for you to feel it, too. I'll be gentle, and you can tell me to touch you how you like. I—I want to take care of you, too. Please."

Brittany can't quite hide her dopey smile. "I'd like that a lot, darlin'," she admits. Then, "Kiss me first?"

Santana hums a major note. "Yes, please," she grins, rolling over to meet her and Brittany's mouths together, painting her tongue past Brittany's lips and along Brittany's deep-hot-wet, lazily and gratefully. She nods into the contact and earns a groan from Brittany.

"All right," Brittany says, pulling away suddenly. "I think I'm ready now."

And all her eagerness seems like the most perfect thing in the world.

The girls shift places on the small cot, careful so as not to flip it, with Brittany moving under Santana and Santana arranging herself, angled, at Brittany's side. Santana's hair brushes over Brittany's skin, and Brittany laughs, tickled. Brittany's cheeks and eyes shine, wonderfully bright.

(Brittany is the most beautiful girl in the world, and Santana doesn't know why there aren't books upon books written all about her.)

Once Brittany feels comfortable lying on her back, Santana kisses her again, trailing her open mouth from Brittany's lips to the pulse point at Brittany's neck and the impossibly soft skin just below where Brittany's sunburn shifts to untouched white. All of a sudden, Santana arrives at a spark of innovation. Feeling adventurous—brave, even—she leans down and slathers kisses over the round of Brittany's breast and then over Brittany's nipple, dragging her tongue over supple skin. Brittany all but keens at her touch, and when she meets Santana's eyes afterward, Santana spares her a wicked smirk, pleased at her own idea.

"Have I ever told you how much I like you?" Brittany says goofily, kissing Santana's lips.

"Maybe a little," Santana replies, grinning.

(If this is a story about wishes, then at least one must come true.)

Brittany laughs, and Santana feels it through her own ribs, her body still attuned to Brittany's every touch. Taking her cue, Santana strokes Brittany's thigh and allows herself to long look at the space between Brittany's legs for the first time, discovering a patch of dampened, fair hair there—finer and softer than her own—and a slick of pink, swollen and wetted. Santana breathes in a deep breath and tastes Brittany's usual windswept-campfire-apple-sweet along with soap and bluing, summer storm, sweat, and an earthy something else, like the forest footing the hillside, rain slicked and natural.

She suddenly feels reverent and overwhelmingly thankful that Brittany would trust her with something so intimate—so sacred.

Her hand slides up Brittany's leg, listing gently over Brittany's scar.

But then.

"Brittany," Santana says gently, "can I—? Could I maybe switch sides? I'm no good with my right hand. I'm—"

"A southpaw," Brittany finishes, stopping Santana's apology before she can say it.

She shifts over on the cot to allow Santana space to shuffle over her. It's an awkward transition, and Santana worries midway through that they might capsize their sitting place like a tippy canoe, but Brittany grins the whole time, and the girls remain upright. Santana settles into the pouch of the bed, adjusting her pose, grounding herself.

"You could lift up your knees," she says in a small voice. "That way I might have more places to touch. It might"—Santana considers her own recent experience—"feel good that way, if you want to try it."

Brittany nods, totally trusting. "All right," she says, hitching her knees up slightly so as to allow Santana more room in which to work.

Santana kisses Brittany again, feeling slightly silly for making Brittany play a round of Going to Jerusalem before she can even touch her. It slightly comforts Santana to hear Brittany's heart beating loudly and quickly through her chest when Santana runs her tongue over Brittany's nipple again, tasting salt sweat and sweet.

Now that Santana knows she can touch Brittany with full permission and nothing barring her, not even her own left-handedness, a jitter of nerves runs through her. What if she can't return the beautiful, wonderful, too big feeling that Brittany gave to her? What if she isn't as clever with her strokes? What if it only happened in Santana because Santana loves Brittany and won't happen for Brittany if she doesn't love Santana back? What if Santana hurts Brittany somehow, though she would rather perish than do it? Brittany trusts her so perfectly; Santana doesn't want to do anything to disappoint Brittany or to cause her upset.

Santana presses a kiss just below Brittany's navel.

"What's that for, darlin'?" Brittany asks, that strange twinge back in her voice.

"For luck," Santana whispers.

And without more hesitation, Santana trails her hand down Brittany's belly through the garden of silk-soft curls, finding Brittany's wet, hot, pink.

The instant Santana's thumb brushes over Brittany's flesh, a jolt travels through Santana, from the pulse in her heart to every part of her in extremity. She didn't realize that touching Brittany would make her feel like this. Brittany's breath hitches in her throat, and she stares at Santana in wonderment.

"Does that feel good?" Santana asks, genuinely curious.

Brittany nods. "Perfect," she says.

Immediately, Santana thinks she could die happy from the assurance, except that she wouldn't miss this moment for anything, not even a chance to visit the heaven where Abuela vowed she would never go otherwise.

(This heaven feels so much closer.)

The invisible string in Santana's chest tugs tight, and she smiles, stroking Brittany deep and slow, drawing a shudder from her. Santana feels wild at Brittany's response, knowing that Brittany can feel her so close, like a promise. She drags her thumb until she finds the hard-soft spot that she hopes is Brittany's _right there_ and presses down over it, swirling her thumb in a little circle, like what she knows would feel good to her.

Brittany cries out something that sounds awfully close to Santana's name and squirms upon the bed, and Santana smiles so widely that her cheeks almost hurt from it, her heart filled up with such love and adoration and carefulness that she can scarcely move, except that she does move—for Brittany. Santana pets over the spot again, and Brittany's hips buck up against her hand.

"Do you like that?" Santana asks, almost certain she knows the answer.

(She still wants to make sure.)

"Yes. Please," Brittany babbles, gasping.

Santana kisses Brittany's kneecap and continues to stroke and explore, reveling in Brittany's heat and in the closeness between them. After not too long, Santana discovers that the better she makes Brittany feel, the wetter Brittany becomes between her legs, until Santana's thumb slicks over every secret part of her. She also discovers that Brittany seems wild for when she moves slowly, only to throw in something quick here or there every so often unexpectedly; Brittany sinks down against the cot and says "Jesus," but it doesn't sound like a blasphemy from her lips at all.

(It sounds forever holy.)

Touching Brittany feels almost like having Brittany touch her; Santana responds to Brittany's movements and little voiced praises with a mouse-quick heart, almost forgetting to breathe. She kisses Brittany where she can reach—the inside of Brittany's thigh, the crest of Brittany's kneecap, and the shallow divot of Brittany's solar plexus when she stoops as if in prayer.

The good feelings in Brittany seem to build to something, cresting.

"San—," she gasps, unable to even finish the name.

In the next second, Santana feels Brittany's flesh move around her hand, contracting, and she watches, mesmerized, as Brittany arches against the cot, hair a halo behind her head, back lifting from the canvas, hips rising up into Santana's touch, lips parted, cheeks flushed, eyes so intensely deep and wild that Santana loses herself in them, feeling for an instant what Brittany feels, so connected to her that she doesn't breathe her own breath.

_I love you._

Santana seals her lips over Brittany's as soon as she sees Brittany draw a breath, crouching over her, their skin pressed together, still lively with the lightning storm of Brittany's little shocks. Santana holds Brittany's face in her right hand and strokes the impossibly soft down beside Brittany's ear with all the tenderness in the world.

"You're perfect," she kisses. "You're perfect, Brittany, and I—I just—I lo—"

She can't say more.

"You, too," Brittany supplies, and somehow Santana can believe it in every possible way.

Their kisses braid together, crazy, until Brittany's heartbeat begins to slow. Santana's own body turns sluggish and heavier with every passing moment. Brittany draws a slow, deep kiss from her lips, and Santana peels from Brittany, settling down at Brittany's side, amazed at what just happened between them.

Maybe they're the only two girls in history who have ever done something so perfect.

(Even the angels wouldn't have a name for it.)

Santana doesn't think she has ever felt so perfectly happy or golden or pleasantly confused or utterly naked. She snuggles down, wrapping her arms around Brittany, nestling into her shoulder like she did when they slept on the hillside after counting out stars in St. James. She presses a kiss to Brittany's shoulder scar with newly lazy lips.

"Did you like that?" she asks, infinitely curious.

"So much," Brittany answers, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, holding Santana to her side.

Brittany smells different now, brighter and sweeter than before. For a long while, she and Santana bask in silence, still rolling on the waves of those perfect touches, learning this new way of being with each other, their bodies ahead of their minds, though not other things, as it were. Santana feels stupid and wonderful and can't help but smile, all kinds of hopeful.

She's in love with the most perfect girl in the world, the kind of girl who could make all Santana's wishes come true.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Santana whispers. She doesn't wait for Brittany to reply before she says, "This is the best day of my life."

She means every word.

Brittany grins and hums deep in her throat, giving Santana a little squeeze. She kisses Santana's hair. "It's not over yet, darlin'," she says slyly, and they kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss, sweet, until they fall to sleep.

* * *

><p>They awaken to a bell.<p>

Santana lifts her head from Brittany's shoulder, muscles languid and thoughts slow. Brittany stirs beneath her, heaving out a deep sigh from the bottom of her lungs. They both lay naked, Santana's arms wrapped at Brittany's waist, Brittany's arms slung around Santana's shoulders, their hair mingled, dark and light, strewn out behind them over the cot. It's darker in the tent than it was before, everything cloaked in deep shadow. The rain has stopped; everything seems still, save for distant camp sounds.

Suddenly, Santana recalls what happened before she and Brittany fell to sleep together.

Though Santana knows she should feel frightened or confused, having no words to explain it and not knowing anything about what the exchange meant to Brittany, she doesn't really; she just likes it too much. She nudges her nose against Brittany's shoulder, breathing in the drying sweetened copper scent over Brittany's skin.

"We gotta get up, BrittBritt," she says, voice scratchy like a split reed.

"We never got dressed," Brittany observes groggily, kissing Santana's hair.

"Nope," Santana agrees.

For several minutes, the girls don't move and only breathe deeply, resting against each other. It's easy to wish, just then, that they could stay as they are forever, and Santana finds herself doing so, closing her eyes and sinking further into Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

(Her Brittany.)

Brittany kisses her hair again after a few moments and gives her shoulders a squeeze. "Puck could have found us," Brittany observes. It isn't a chastisement or a caution—just one of Brittany's matter-of-this, matter-of-that things. "We probably shouldn't take a nude nap together next time, darlin'. Not when he could step in on us."

The words _next time_ ring through Santana, louder and more compelling than the mess bell.

She swallows. "Right," she says simply. "Next time, we'll get dressed afterwards."

And with that, Brittany rousts them out of bed, wriggling out from under Santana and urging Santana to sit up herself. "Come on," Brittany coaxes. "We should probably put on something before we head to supper 'cause I don't think Ma Jones'll like it if we come to the table just as buck as God made us. I'm starving, anyway."

"Me, too," Santana admits. She glances around the tent. "We could probably put on our regular clothes now. I'll bet they're dry."

Brittany stands up from the cot, and Santana instantly misses her. She walks over to the overturned vegetable crate where she left her dress to drip dry what must have been hours ago. "It's good enough," she says, running her fingers over the tatty, blue fabric.

Santana stands up to retrieve her own outfit, finding it piled on the ground near the three-legged stool at the back of the tent. She tests the fabric and discovers it mostly dry, though still somewhat damp at its center where Santana left it in a heap on the grass. It's wearable, though, undergarments and all.

Of course, it does seem such a shame to dress again now that Santana knows all the fun one can have sans her clothing.

"Whoever invented clothes is an idiot," Santana grouses, unfolding her blouse and searching for the head hole.

And Brittany nods, "Entirely."

They both grin, stupid for each other. The mess bell rings and rings.

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later, the girls scurry toward the mess pit, linked by the pinky fingers, both smiling foolishly. Every time they duck around a new corner to find an empty tent row, Brittany sneaks a kiss to the corner of Santana's mouth, like she just can't help herself, and Santana doesn't mind it at all.<p>

Grass slicks, wet under their bare feet, and everything in the circus appears waterlogged and heavy. The rain itself has stopped, probably an hour or two ago at least. For the first time since morning, the sky appears perfectly clear, a deep and pristine kind of black with innumerable pinprick stars dotted over it, winking down upon Santana and Brittany like they know a secret, and a happy one, at that.

There aren't nearly as many bugs in the air as usual, and when Santana notes it, Brittany shrugs and says, "They're probably all still hiding from the rain," wise as usual. As the girls draw closer to the mess pit, they begin to hear the sounds of people. By now, someone has peeled back the blue canopy again, opening the mess pit beneath the stars.

Santana feels almost sad to rejoin society after falling away into Fairy with Brittany, but the notion abates as soon as she and Brittany step into the firelight to see Sam, Puck, and Blaine waving at them, gesturing to two extra plates.

"We thought you'd never get here," Puck says as the girls draw near.

Santana suddenly experiences a profound fondness for everyone, quiet though it may be. She and Brittany smile, still not exactly chatty after their big adventure. Santana feels different than she ever has before, like she carries the perfect secret in her heart that lights her and fills her with goodwill. She and Brittany share a clandestine smile, and Brittany gives her pinky finger a squeeze. Puck glances between them as they sit down to claim their plates. He seems to realize some unsaid thing about them, though not anything telling.

He doesn't complain when they sit side by side upon the grass, leaned up against a bench, paying infinite attention to each other and little attention to him.

The food tastes better than it ever has before, and the boys catcall Ma Jones all through the meal, grateful to her for it. For her part, Santana remains much quieter, stiller, concealed half in shadow like Brittany. She feels a lightness inside her that has never been there before, like her heart is a balloon that may well float away. Though the boys try their best to engage both Santana and Brittany in conversation, Santana and Brittany retain their silence, holding it between pursed, smiling lips, speaking their minds perfectly to each other without saying any words at all.

Brittany's eyes trace over Santana's body, remembering its secrets. She touches Santana at the ankles, the wrists, and along her thigh, always keeping hold of Santana's balloon string.

(The same invisible string as always, really.)

When the boys clear everyone's finished plates to the washtub, leaving the girls alone, Santana sneaks a kiss across Brittany's knuckles, soft with silence, and Brittany kisses her eyelids, first one and then the other, blanketed in the dark.

* * *

><p>The circus band arrives shortly after Puck and his friends return from the other side of the chuck, the string players emerging from beyond the blue canopy, presumably from the large tent where Santana knows that they make their living quarters, their shaggy-haired maestro arriving shortly thereafter on a flatbed wagon pulled by a draft horse, his harmonium at the ready, already struck in tune. Shane drives the wagon to the peripheries of the mess area, parking it just beyond the chuck, close enough to the fire that the band members will still have wavering, orange light by which to play but far enough away from the floor that the company members will have space to dance.<p>

Ken scuttles out from the crowd. "Here's to next week!" he toasts, raising up his tin water cup to the folks surrounding him.

(Santana can't help but notice that he didn't praise the company's performance this week.)

(She thinks in passing of unfilled paychecks.)

Santana had forgotten that there would be a dance tonight after she hid herself inside her tent for so many hours with Brittany. She watches, amazed, as the circus company clears the benches and tables of Ma Jones' kitchen away, opening up the turf around the hearth for dancing. When the band members strike up their first notes upon their instruments, they seem to play at the string in Santana's heart, as well. She glances immediately toward Brittany.

It baffles her to think that they only set eyes on each other for the first time at a dance like this one exactly one week ago.

"I hope you don't mind, but I think I'll have to ask your missus for a dance," Sam says to Puck, slapping him on the shoulder just as the band begins to play.

Puck waves him off, wearing his devil smirk. "Ladybird don't dance, Sammy," he says. "She don't like it."

Just then, Brittany stands up from beside Santana, wearing her cat-grin. Brittany's eyes shine, wily with something, and she makes a low bow to Santana before extending her a hand, a porter offering to help a lady step onto a curb.

"Shall we, Miss Santana?" she asks in her ridiculous, wonderful false proper accent.

Santana accepts Brittany's proffered hand, allowing Brittany to pull her to her feet, brushing grass from her skirt as she does so. A spark lights in Santana's heart.

"We shall, Miss Brittany," she says, performing her most decorous curtsy to Brittany, trying to bite down on her smile to keep her cheeks from hurting too much.

The boys whoop, and Sam slaps Puck on the back, hard. Blaine crows, "Looks like she just doesn't like dancing with you, buddy!" and Puck grimaces and grits his teeth against the humiliation.

Santana would almost feel sorry for Puck except that Brittany has her full attention. With the same unfailing grace she wears posing before her father's backboard, Brittany leads Santana out onto the dance floor, guiding her by the hand as if they were at a May cotillion, her chin held high and a clever gleam in her eyes.

The girls debut onto the dance floor amidst a half-dozen other pairs, including Sam's mother and father, linked at the hands, and the some of the supes paired with Ma's kitchen girls. A few people eye them, somewhere between amused and horrified to see them set to dance together, but they scarcely pay any mind to the attention. Santana still feels entirely connected to Brittany, the invisible string between them running shorter than ever.

Brittany steps back to Santana and bows to her again, never taking eyes off her. Brittany wears the silliest grin, though she acts entirely serious.

In the corner of Santana's locket heart, her deep wanting to dance—the selfsame that she tucked away on her first night at the circus—stirs, rousting from its hiding place.

(How can Santana help but love the girl who makes all her wishes come true?)

While before she had feared somehow breaking the rules or making herself seem foolish, now Santana doesn't mind so much, as long as Brittany guides her.

"I've never danced with anyone before," she admits, not because she feels ashamed for her inexperience but so Brittany that knows the truth.

Brittany stands up from her bow, her face even with patience and a quiet admiration.

"You dance so pretty during the circuses, darlin'," she says as if it's the answer to everything, so certain that Santana has to wonder if what she says isn't somehow true. "Just follow me."

(Santana would follow Brittany anywhere.)

Brittany takes Santana's hands in her own, guiding the left to her waist and taking the right in her own left. She sets her own free hand in the middle of Santana's back, supporting Santana's spine, and Santana curls to the touch, adoring it.

"I'm used to watching out for big, old clown feet, darlin', so I take wide steps," Brittany mumbles, suddenly self-conscious herself, "and I've never led a dance myself, except for when I danced with little Stevie Evans because he said he didn't know how to keep up with the Virginia Reel without my help."

Both Brittany and Santana laugh, nervous.

Their eyes meet, glinting in the nearby firelight, orange and red playing over Brittany's tiger-flecked blue, shadows lapping over Brittany's skin, painting her sharply beautiful and smart under the night. Both girls draw a breath, and Brittany straightens, lifting her chin. A silver moon grins overhead, almost entirely full and fat with light.

And then they dance.

Santana quickly decides that dancing with Brittany is nothing like standing upon her father's black Brogans while he wheeled her about the parlor. For one thing, it proves a far giddier experience, with both girls trading nervous giggles with each other as they turn toward the center of the floor. For another thing, it requires far more concentration because Brittany's pretty parted lips keep distracting Santana from the steps.

(She wants to give Brittany kisses.)

Santana doesn't know the name of the dance through which Brittany leads her, if there is one, but she finds it has a lively cadence and requires that they both skip up their feet, jigging around the fire in wide, prancing steps. Santana's hair falls over her face, and she laughs as she anticipates going one way only to have Brittany take her another. The girls move in broad circles on the dance floor.

"Clown shoes, huh?" Santana laughs, delighted by Brittany's leading.

Brittany laughs. "Yup," she says, wearing her mischievous smile. "It doesn't hurt quite so much when you step on my feet as when Sam does it, darlin'."

"Hey!"

(Santana doesn't think she's ever had a droller time doing anything with anyone than she has dancing with Brittany.)

As Brittany steps in closer to her, Santana feels the summer warmth breathing through Brittany's clothes and sees sweet pink tingeing Brittany's cheeks and brow. Her own heartbeat picks up beneath her breastbone, and she feels dizzy—whether from spinning or from Brittany's closeness, she can't exactly say.

Eventually, Sam joins them on the dance floor, leading a very smug looking Rachel Berry in less vivid circles than the ones in which Brittany leads Santana. Santana can't help but notice how Sam glances over Rachel's shoulder toward the chuck wagon as if hoping to find something—_someone_—there waiting for him, a keen longing behind his eyes. She suddenly feels immensely grateful to dance as she does and snuggles close to Brittany.

(She knows, she knows, she knows.)

Though most of the other couples leave the dance floor after the first song, switching out to rest their feet and perhaps refresh themselves with water, Brittany and Santana scarcely pause between their first dance and their second. Brittany changes her footwork for this second dance, though Santana can't manage to count out the specifics, and, vaguely, it occurs to Santana that Brittany dances like no one Santana has ever seen before, with a sort of freedom to her movements that somehow reminds Santana of the best in Rachel and Ma Jones' voices.

(Brittany moves her like a song.)

"All right, ladybird. Come on."

It takes Santana a half second to realize that Puck has appeared at Brittany's shoulder to cut in. He holds out his hand expectantly, waiting for Santana to accept it. Santana and Brittany share a look; Santana doesn't want to dance with Puck, but she feels certain there must be something in the rules to say that she can't avoid it.

"Don't step on her toes," Brittany warns, peeling back from Santana, allowing Santana to take Puck's hand. She lingers just a second longer before departing the dance floor.

It isn't terrible dancing with Puck—he just isn't Brittany and never will be.

He moves more stiffly than Brittany does and sometimes shuffles with lazy feet. He wears a smug smirk the whole time he has Santana with him and spins her once or twice in a twirl, just for show, as if she's his fire flail and he wants to perform a trick. Santana allows Puck to lead her where he will, but she can't help but watch over his shoulder for Brittany, who's taken a seat beside Blaine in the grass.

After a while, Blaine seems to ask Brittany to dance, and Brittany accepts, rising with him.

Though Santana knows that Blaine is mostly harmless, she still doesn't like watching Brittany line up with him and hates it even more when he begins to lead Brittany around the floor. Secretly, Santana wishes that she and Brittany would only ever dance with each other. Her and Brittany's eyes meet from across the fire. Somehow Santana knows that Brittany wishes for the same thing as she does.

* * *

><p>Everyone swaps dancing partners several times, with Puck dancing with Rachel while Santana dances with Sam, and Santana dancing with Blaine while Puck dances with one of the equestriennes, and Brittany dancing with the big surly supe David and then with Sam twice in a row while Rachel dances with Kurt the juggler, who perhaps boasts the best and crispest steps amongst any of the boys.<p>

Santana finds that she enjoys dancing with Sam—who makes no attempts to hide his poor timing and instead clowns off it, pretending to slip up here, fully stopping to resume his count there, to great comic effect—and even Blaine, but dislikes how Puck struts with her. She mostly just pines for Brittany no matter with whom she dances, watching, vaguely miserable, as Brittany passes from hand to hand without returning to her.

By and by, the company departs the mess area, with more people leaving the longer the night wears on until the crowd dwindles down to include only the youngsters, with the older performers and the little children heading off to bed.

Once, Santana catches sight of Ma Jones lingering at the chuck wagon, watching the dancers on the floor, her face mostly obscured in shadow as she scrubs over the same spot on a single dish again and again and again in small, hard circles.

Before Santana's heart can sink too low for Ma's sake, Brittany appears behind Puck's shoulder.

"May I dance with you, Santana?" she asks, and when Puck sees the way Santana's eyes light, he doesn't bother to complain.

He passes Santana into Brittany's care without another word.

As soon as he retreats, Brittany and Santana grin at each other.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths.

_Hi_, Santana mouths back.

"Some music, please, Maestro?" Brittany calls over toward the band, as though they weren't just about to cue up another song anyway. She waves her hand as if to conduct them. The haggard band leader rolls his eyes, vexed. The band plays, and Santana laughs, perfectly in love with Brittany Pierce as they take one more turn about the floor.

By the time the dance dies out and the band disperses, all the bugs in Onawa seem to have come out from their rainstorm hiding places. They buzz and chirp in full force, flitting around Santana's ears and eyes as she allows Brittany to lead her back to her tent while Puck stays behind to help gather up benches with the other boys. Brittany and Santana swing their linked hands between them, and fireflies dot their path in a trail of earthbound shooting stars, rising up from this tuft of weeds and that before darting back into the darkness.

Neither girl speaks at first when they reach Santana's tent, not wanting to break the spell that binds them. Instead, they slump against each other, Santana's arms linked around Brittany's waist, Brittany stroking through Santana's hair, lips pressed in an unceasing kiss to Santana's crown. The world chirps and crickets around them, and, in the distance, frogs croak out whooping calls.

Finally, Santana whispers, her lips pressed up against Brittany's shoulder, "Thank you for today," and then stops.

"You're welcome," Brittany says, finding Santana's mouth, pressing their shared secret into it.

(In the quiet of herself, Santana thinks she might have started to remember her forgotten thing.)

(She strokes the thread ring on her finger, counting secrets as she and Brittany kiss.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: Special thanks to my wonderful and patient translator Lu at ididntmeanyou for her help with my Spanish. Also, everyone please show Han some love for getting me through this chapter because she was the best cheerleader with magic pompoms and everything. Check out her work at socallmedaisy on tumblr and be sure to read her epic story i80w as she gears up to write her final chapter.<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**"Lo siento, Rachel, pero Brittany dice la verdad. Excepto que, realmente, no lo siento" : "I'm sorry, Rachel, but Brittany speaks the truth. Except that, really, I'm not sorry"**_

_**(Tenemos un dicho, Santana: La hija del Diablo se casa hoy) : (We have a saying, Santana: The daughter of the Devil is getting married today)**_

… _**un milagro enviado por el Diablo o Dios o lo que sea, lo que sea, amén : a miracle sent by the Devil or God or whatever, whatever, amen**_

_**una boda : a wedding**_

_**muy linda : very pretty**_

_**_(Te amo, Brittany. Siempre) : (I love you, Brittany. Always)_**_

_**(Tenemos un dicho: Santana la hija del Diablo se casa hoy) : (We have a saying: Santana the daughter of the Devil is getting married today)**_

**You can find Santana's grandmother's **_**dichos**_**, or proverbs, at any popular Spanish proverbs site.**


	10. Full Moon on a Sunday Night Part I

**Chapter 9: Full Moon on a Sunday Night, Part I**

**Sunday, July 3rd, 1898: Storm Lake, Iowa**

Santana can still feel Brittany worn into her muscles and bones, humming somewhere inside her, when she goes to sleep at night and when she awakens in the morning. It is as if Brittany left a piece of herself somewhere at Santana's quick, engraving it there as a child might engrave her own name upon the underside of the floorboard in her room, claiming space for herself eternally, though no one knows of it. Somehow, Brittany seems to have given her secrets over to Santana, treasuring them up within Santana's locket heart. If Santana will only take the time to learn those secrets, they'll be hers to keep.

(Forever.)

Santana always felt guilty snooping through things that didn't belong to her when she was a child—Abuela's tiny tin filled with strange coins and keepsake trinkets from San Juan, the silver clutch hidden in Papa's surgeon's bag, an unlabeled photograph of a pretty, dark woman whom Santana never met sheaved secretly inside it—and so she eventually outgrew the habit altogether.

Examining the gift that Brittany has given her doesn't feel like snooping to Santana at all, though.

It feels like a trust.

Santana doesn't know what to call what happened between her and Brittany in the tent yesterday, but she can't stop thinking about it—not just about the sensations but about how ineffably close she felt to Brittany as they touched each other.

(Brittany acted like she could see for miles when she looked into Santana's eyes.)

Though Santana can't especially explain it, she somehow feels two conflicting things at once: in the first wise, as if Brittany found her hiding in the sunny bay window at the bachelor cottage, reading a book, and curled up there with her, resting upon her shoulder and listening to her breathe; in the second, as if Brittany led her on another circus adventure, tugging her down some bright, dreamy back alley on the midway that she never noticed before, clasping her by the hand, laughing.

The important thing Santana has forgotten lingers just at the peripheries of her consciousness. It feels heavy on the tip of her tongue, like the word she can't manage to conjure to her mind, though she knows its definition and intends to use it in her sentence. It dances just beyond her sightline, a glimmer of light, there and then gone every time Santana tries to fix it in her focus.

Puck hovers over Santana's shoulder while she washes her face and teeth in the steel basin, his expression heavy and eyes clouded with something dark and petulant, like a thunderstorm brewing way off on the horizon.

"You sure you're awake, ladybird?" he asks, smirking as Santana splashes her face with water once, twice, and then three times in a row.

(Santana doesn't know how to tell him that she feels both more awake and more asleep than she ever has before in her life.)

(Puck hardly hears a word Santana says, but Brittany hears Santana, even when Santana says not even a word at all.)

* * *

><p>Brittany waits for Santana on the edge of the mess pit, holding a hot breakfast plate, a quiet excitement written into the upswing of her smile. The lucky penny feeling in Santana's belly flips, and Santana returns Brittany's grin and breaks away from Puck, running to meet her.<p>

Santana forgoes a proper greeting. "Will I ever get the chance to bring you breakfast?" she teases instead, breathless and grinning as she joins Brittany on the edge of the mess pit.

"Only if you wake up before I do someday, sleepyhead," Brittany replies in a happy whisper.

Brittany isn't the only person nearby who speaks softly.

Whereas normally the mess pit buzzes with conversation during mealtimes, today it seems almost preternaturally quiet, charged with an eerie, nervous energy, only the barest hints of voices snaking through the assembly.

Everywhere Santana looks, the company members hunch over their food, sneaking furtive glances at the world around them, watching over their shoulders as if they expect some unwanted visitor to arrive at any moment.

Ken rubs his thumb over something brown and furry hanging from a chain at his belt, muttering darkly to himself under his breath; it takes Santana a full minute to recognize the nub as a graveyard rabbit's foot, dried and preserved.

(She shudders.)

Mr. Berry repeats a hard k-sounding word to himself and his household between bites of porridge, his quadroon manservant sitting close to him on the bench and Rachel seated across from the pair of them, doe-eyed, nodding along dutifully to her father's chant. Mr. Berry's hand twines with his manservant's and Rachel's on the tabletop, skin atop skin atop skin. If Santana had to guess, she would say that the Berry family was praying.

_(Cuidado con el mal de ojo, Santana.)_

True to her just-so nature, Brittany seems not to notice any strangeness in the company's behavior, or, if she does, it doesn't fuss her. Though she answered Santana in a whisper herself, her eyes remain wonderfully bright.

Brittany gestures to a spot on the ground where she and Santana can sit, and both girls set down together, Brittany fitting the plate between them, indicating that they'll share. She either forgot a second fork again today or didn't care to collect one. In either case, Santana doesn't especially mind that, once again, she and Brittany will have to trade off their single fork between bites.

The people around Brittany and Santana—a few supes, some freaks from the sideshow, and the Flying Dragon Changs, sipping their usual coffee—watch the two girls, thoroughly distrustful of them. Their wariness grates on Santana. She swallows, an unsettled feeling creeping up inside her.

"Britt," Santana says, adopting a whisper herself, "what's the matter with everyone? Why is it so quiet?"

Even in a whisper, Santana's voice slices through the morning air, loud enough for everyone nearby her to hear it.

"Oh," Brittany says, as if she hadn't even noticed the quiet before, despite speaking so softly herself. She scrunches up her nose. "It's just on account of the full moon tonight. Circus folk are very superstitious about omens. They don't mean to act unfriendly because of it, though."

Were they more at liberty to converse with one another, Santana might explain that no one at the circus besides Brittany really speaks to her anyway, full moon or not, but, as it is, Santana only nods, observing the way various company members glance up at the dark morning sky. Everyone acts keenly disconcerted, even the Flying Dragon Changs, whose Chinese superstitions apparently match those of their American cohorts. The moon wears a round face, half-obscured behind cloud-cover overhead.

"Is the full moon a good or a bad omen for the circus folk?" Santana asks, curious and somewhat nervous in spite of herself.

Brittany shrugs. "It depends on how today turns out, I think," she says wisely. Then, "Do you want some eggs, darlin'?"

(Santana never has experienced a good omen yet before in her life; she wonders if there isn't a first time for everything.)

* * *

><p>Though everyone else eats breakfast with their hairs on end, Brittany and Santana share their meal in pleasant silence, trading glances with each other, their backs rested against an overturned bench, their legs stretched out side by side in the cool grass.<p>

At first, Santana wonders if Brittany remembers what happened between them in the tent yesterday in the same way that she does, the memory glowing deep inside her, as warm and insistent as a lit ember, but then Brittany rubs her thumb over the crook of Santana's elbow, looking at Santana in _that_ way, and Santana knows that Brittany does.

Suddenly, Santana couldn't keep from grinning if she were to try it. She leans back where she sits, infinitely pleased, and Brittany watches her, curious.

The ground feels damp and cold underneath the girls, still saturated from yesterday's rainstorms, but the glow from the nearby kitchen fire keeps them warm enough. They pay close attention to each other, Brittany tracing her fingers over the patterns on Santana's skirt whenever she isn't eating and Santana rubbing at Brittany's bare ankle with her thumb whenever she is.

Despite the company's weirdness, Santana thinks that she and Brittany are perfect just as they are and feels even more in awe of Brittany than ever before. Brittany doesn't feed Santana like she did yesterday at breakfast, but she does cut bites from their food for Santana each time she passes Santana their fork, and Santana adores her for it.

When the girls finish their meal, Brittany offers to take their dirty place settings to the washtubs, and Santana watches her go, loving everything about Brittany from her careless hair to the way she slips so easily through the human traffic, cat-graceful and liquid in her movements. Santana melts seeing Brittany mouth out a polite _Excuse me_ to every person she passes, though Brittany disturbs no one and no one even notices Brittany's good manners in the end.

All the while, Santana feels closer than ever to remembering her forgotten thing.

(Something about waking to bright lights and feeling the best kind of surprise—)

When Brittany returns to Santana a minute later, she greets Santana with a curious expression, tilting her head to one side, examining Santana as one might examine a painting newly hung upon a wall, checking it for balance. Brittany stares into Santana's eyes as if she's noticed something fascinating deep within them.

"What?" Santana asks, bashful under Brittany's attention and so sweet on Brittany she can scarcely stand it.

Brittany laughs her little silent laugh, though Santana hasn't said anything particularly droll, and glances down at her own toes, her expression changing from curious to caught in a second. Brittany bites her lip and shakes her hair down from behind her ear so as to hide her face.

(Her blush?)

"Nothing, darlin'," she says dreamily, only it doesn't sound like nothing at all.

Brittany gestures for Santana to follow her away from the mess pit, toward the wagon bay, and Santana does so. They keep a perfect pace together.

"What?" Santana tries again, grinning now, shaking her own hair down to curtain her face. She feels wonderfully warm all over, and she only mostly knows why.

"I—," Brittany starts, serious, and then stops. She glances at Santana and changes her tack, suddenly jocular. "I think you had syrup on your nose," she says playfully, reaching up toward Santana's face.

Santana ducks away before Brittany can touch her nose, laughing. "What? No way!" she says, grabbing for Brittany's hand. "I'll have you know that I'm a very dainty eater, Britt."

"Like a princess?" Brittany says, suddenly not teasing anymore.

(Santana knows what Brittany really means, of course, but somehow her ears only hear that Brittany just likened her to a princess for the second time since they've known each other.)

Brittany's compliment nearly causes Santana to forget her line of inquiry but not quite. Santana fixes Brittany with a serious look. "BrittBritt," she pouts, "come on. What is it?"

She reaches down and tangles their pinky fingers together, giving their hands a little swing. The air around them feels humid, though still cool before the sunrise, and the white city falls to canvas ruin, pooling at their feet as they move further and further out from the mess.

"Sometimes I think you know exactly what," Brittany mumbles. She doesn't meet Santana's eyes, though she wears her secret smile, somehow hopeful, sweet, and reserved all at once.

(Her words are the perfect riddle.)

Santana's heart gives a flutter in her chest, except it doesn't stop after only a second. "Know what exactly?" she presses, suddenly just as nervous as she was when she saw Brittany naked in the tent yesterday or when she first climbed the ladder up to the trapeze platforms in the big top.

Brittany glances between Santana and their destination. Only one-hundred yards stand between the girls and the wagons and the rest of the circus company.

"I love kissing you," Brittany blurts out.

(Santana's heart takes wing and flies away at Brittany's second word, and, though Brittany's third and fourth words aren't quite what Santana might have hoped, Santana doesn't bother to call her heart back to her from its heightening heights.)

(They're just a different kind of wonderful than Santana had expected, that's all.)

"I love kissing you," Brittany repeats, talking quietly and quickly, as if she can't help but say such a big thing, even given the short amount of time in which she has to say it.

She speaks in little upswings and looks at the air just above her head, like she pulls her words from the ether there. She says, "I can't stop thinking about yesterday and how much I love kissing you. I'm wild about it, darlin', and if I don't think about it enough now, I'm worried that I'll start thinking about it again during the first show, and I'll just stop in the ring and think about it forever and ever, and everyone will just have to stage the rest of the show around me, and Will and Ken and Mr. Adams probably won't know what to do with me at all."

Brittany pauses briefly, though not even long enough for Santana to begin to say anything in reply to her, before continuing, "You probably haven't thought about what happened yesterday as much as I have because you don't know how good it feels to kiss you—you only know what it feels like to give your kisses away. I think you're the perfect kisser, Santana, but you probably already know that because you're so good at everything you do."

Santana isn't sure if Brittany stops speaking lest she actually blush herself to death for saying another word or because she and Santana have finally reached the wagon bay, where other people suddenly surround them, but, in either case, Santana doesn't think she has ever seen Brittany's ears pinker or that she herself has ever felt more entirely wide-eyed and stupid in response to something Brittany has said.

She gapes at Brittany, wondering if she didn't just imagine Brittany's every perfect word.

Her whole mind stalls, blank, except for a single thought.

_Brittany Pierce loves to kiss me._

Brittany searches Santana's face, waiting for her to say something, holding her breath. Santana searches for words but can't find anything inside herself except for the desire to kiss Brittany breathless.

Santana rocks up on tiptoe, almost brave enough to do just what she pleases, only to feel something collide with her back the second that she does so.

An elbow.

"Sorry, ladybird!" Puck says, spinning to see Santana just at the same time she spins to see him.

Santana feels jolted all over, not just from the contact but also from remembering that someone else exists in the world outside from herself and Brittany—and particularly Noah Puckerman, about whom Santana had forgotten as soon as she caught sight of Brittany at the edge of the mess pit earlier this morning, before Brittany even called Santana's kisses perfect.

It occurs to Santana that she doesn't know where Puck sat to take his meal or with whom. Apparently, it occurs to Puck, too.

Puck glances between Santana and Brittany at her side. "You weren't planning to ride to Storm Lake with me, were you?" Puck observes, his voice dull.

It isn't really a question.

Santana knows what the rules would tell her to do, but she also knows that Brittany Pierce just confessed to loving her kisses, which seems like an infinitely more important thing than any arbitrary, killjoy rules ever could at all. Santana shuffles where she stands, Brittany paused at her shoulder, and Puck seems to take her stoppage for her answer.

His face falls, all brightness leaving it. The petulant thunderstorm from this morning returns to his eyes.

(Santana wonders if Puck won't blame her reluctance to follow him on the bad news moon.)

(He doesn't.)

"Have fun with Brittany, ladybird," Puck says curtly, offering a terse tip of his hat to both girls, gritting his teeth.

Only just then does Santana remember how she refused to dance with Puck at first last night so that she could dance with Brittany instead, earning Puck a ribbing from his friends, who laughed at him about how his "wife" preferred Brittany's company to his own.

She cringes.

Now Santana has wounded Puck's ego for the second time in as many days. She doesn't mean to treat Puck discourteously, of course—and especially not when he cares for her so well—it's just that indebtedness isn't the same thing as love.

(Santana owes Puck more than she'll ever repay him.)

(Brittany gave Santana her every secret for free.)

Brittany fidgets behind Santana, awkward. "You don't have to ride the train with me," Brittany says in a very small voice.

Puck waves Brittany's propriety off before Santana can even fret about it. "She might as well," he growls. "I've got a card game to sharp anyway."

He doesn't wait for either Santana or Brittany to rebut him before he stalks away, pulling his hat brim down over his eyes. Santana knows it's a mistake to let Puck go, but, at the same time, she can't bring herself to chase Puck when he doesn't seem to want her to catch up with him anyway. Despite all her resentment of them, Santana finds the rules buzzing through her mind like swarming gnats, suddenly unavoidable, and feels guilty for breaking them. She pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

Brittany shuffles behind her. "I'm sorry to get you in trouble again, darlin'," she says quietly. "I promised I wouldn't do that anymore."

Santana shakes her head. "You didn't do anything wrong," she says truthfully, knowing that it's all her own fault that she can't bother to show Puck any kindness, though he saved her life, bringing her with him out of New York City to Mr. Adams' circus.

(Really, how could it be Brittany's fault that Santana loves her when Brittany doesn't even know that Santana loves her in the first place?)

"Puck doesn't like me very much," Brittany admits, setting a hand on Santana's shoulder.

Santana looks up at the touch, meeting Brittany's gaze. Somehow, it comes as a surprise that Brittany knows of Puck's dislike. At once, Santana feels ashamed on Puck's behalf and also angry at him. She also feels sad to think that Brittany might have hurt feelings from Puck's curtness.

An overwhelming and largely inexpressible need to protect Brittany from anything that could harm her—even unkind words from Santana's own would-be husband—surges in Santana's chest.

On the one hand, Santana wants to tell Brittany that Puck is just surly and that he doesn't dislike Brittany more than he dislikes anyone else around the camp. On the other hand, Santana knows that Brittany is right.

Puck has always seemed wary of Brittany at best and resentful of Brittany at worst, and Santana's preference for Brittany's company over his own has done nothing to improve his feelings toward Brittany over the last week.

All of it amounts to Santana feeling guilty—for liking Puck less than she ought to, for making Puck dislike Brittany more than he already did, for allying herself to Puck in the first place, though she had no choice but to do so, amongst a thousand more confused reasons.

"But why doesn't he like you?" Santana asks, not really to Brittany, but to Puck himself or maybe the universe at large.

Brittany gives a short, embarrassed laugh, obviously flattered that Santana thinks so highly of her. She gestures for Santana to join her in the bed of a Studebaker farm wagon, and both girls scramble up the shiny, red axel, gripping the box sides, nestling into the hull, setting down hip to hip.

They find the wagon occupied by the three Flying Dragon Changs. A supe Santana doesn't recognize sits on the driver's bench.

Despite her and Brittany's company, Santana doesn't mind continuing their conversation, knowing that the Flying Dragon Changs don't speak a word of English between them and that the supe won't bother to listen to talk taking place so far below and behind him.

"I'm serious!" she complains. "How can anyone dislike you, Britt? Puck may have a wooden head, but I didn't know it was hollow, too."

Brittany almost chokes on her laughter. She covers her mouth with both hands, trying to stifle the noise. "Darlin', I can't believe you would say that!" she splutters, somewhere between incredulous and pleased as both Judy and Punch all at once.

Santana pretends not to blush.

"Says the most unfair girl in the world," she teases, sounding much more collected than she actually feels.

(Brittany Pierce likes to kiss her.)

"I'm not unfair," Brittany defends lamely, snuggling down beside Santana, resting her head upon Santana's shoulder.

The sudden contact surprises Santana, though only in the most pleasant way possible. Brittany sighs and sinks against Santana, turning soft, her body settling against Santana's corners and rounds. After a minute, Brittany mumbles, "Puck doesn't like me because I told him he kisses like a fish."

The wagon jolts into motion.

Santana just jolts.

* * *

><p>Santana's brain can't decide which one amongst its one-thousand questions to ask Brittany first, so it chooses the simplest thing.<p>

"Wait, how does Puck kiss like a fish? What do you mean?"

"You know, like a fish," Brittany says, just so. "Wet and slimy?"

Brittany puckers her lips a few times against the air, loud and exaggerated, mimicking the way a fish might breathe underwater, and Santana catches it in her peripheral vision. No girl pretending to be a fish has any right to look as adorable as Brittany Pierce does just now—and especially not when she has just said the most confusing thing in the world.

Brittany has kissed Puck?

Puck has kissed Brittany?

(When Santana thinks about Brittany kissing anyone but her, she feels strangely startled, like she did when she was a small child and she would suddenly fall down.)

Really, it shouldn't surprise Santana to learn that Puck and Brittany have kissed.

After all, Santana knows that Puck is something of a scoundrel, for Mr. Adams revealed as much when Puck first introduced Santana to him in Tekamah when she joined the circus, and Santana's father opined as much when he first hired Puck as his gardener. It only makes sense that Puck kissed other girls at the circus before he met Santana. Since Puck and Brittany grew up together at the circus, it also only makes sense that Brittany might be one of those other girls, as well.

Come to think about it, Puck has probably kissed scores of circus girls, from Rachel Berry all the way through the whole Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie, and Brittany has probably kissed other fellas at the circus aside from Puck, too. Maybe Brittany has kissed Sam Evans or Blaine the trilby tramp or even stupid, stun-faced Finn Hudson.

Somehow Santana had assumed that since she had never kissed anyone herself until last week, Brittany hadn't, either.

Brittany rustles against Santana's body. "Are you sore at me, darlin'?" she asks in the smallest little voice Santana thinks she may have ever heard.

"Sore at you?" Santana repeats, trying the words out for size.

Is Santana sore at Brittany for kissing Noah Puckerman, or at least for allowing Noah Puckerman to kiss her for long enough to know that he kisses like a fish?

No.

(Not even a little bit.)

"It was a long time before you came to the circus," Brittany says apologetically. She doesn't quite manage to hide the nervousness in her voice.

"Brittany—," Santana starts, so sweet on Brittany she can hardly stand it.

Santana wants to explain how she finds it strangely easy to abide the idea that Brittany and Puck kissed a long time ago, but that she hopes that they'll never kiss again. She also wants to tell Brittany how much she herself dislikes it when Puck kisses her, even just on the cheek, and that she wishes that he would give up on doing so altogether. Even beyond that, she wants to say that she only ever wants to kiss Brittany from now on, now that she knows the wonder of Brittany's kisses.

Santana also wishes that she could tell Brittany the truth, which is that while Santana would pay absolutely any fee to make it so that she had given Brittany her first kiss and that Brittany had given her hers in return, she also doesn't especially care whom either she or Brittany kissed first as long as they both continue kissing each other often and for the rest of always, for as long as they're together.

Mostly Santana just really wants to kiss Brittany.

Santana's breath catches in her throat, and Brittany seems to sense it. Brittany lifts her head from Santana's shoulder. For a second, the two girls stare at each other through the darkness. Brittany's eyes turn soft and fervent and Santana starts to lean in. Their hands tangle together in their laps. Santana feels Brittany's eager breath curling over her skin. Brittany waits for Santana, and Santana tilts her head, already opening her mouth, tuned to Brittany in yesterday's key.

Something shifts inside the wagon. Someone clears his throat.

The Flying Dragon Changs.

Santana and Brittany spring apart, suddenly remembering their traveling companions for the first time since the Studebaker started toward the Onawa depot. The girls look up to discover three sets of dark, curious eyes staring at them.

No one says a word.

At first, Santana's heart races and she waits for the Flying Dragon Changs to voice some complaint, but then she remembers that they couldn't say anything to her that she would understand anyhow. Santana wonders what the Flying Dragon Changs must think, knowing that Santana and Brittany were about to kiss, but not having the faculty to say anything about it to anyone, except to each other in Chinese. Santana tries to read their faces. Are they appalled? Disgusted? She can't seem to parse it out.

The two oldest Flying Dragon Changs—the pair who are either brother and sister or man and wife—exchange glances with each other. The youngest furrows her brow. Her mouth hangs slightly ajar.

After a minute, Brittany starts to laugh, a bright, golden sound that bubbles up through the early morning darkness, filling it like sweet cream in black coffee. Her laughter catches at something in Santana, and Santana giggles, too, suddenly overcome. She and Brittany tangle their hands more inextricably together, and the Flying Dragon Changs stare and stare at them, not quite sure how to regard two people as silly as they are.

It takes another minute before all the laughter and nerves in Santana's belly flutter away on butterfly wings. She and Brittany lapse into silence, and Brittany lowers her head to rest upon Santana's shoulder again.

Santana hadn't realized that she and Brittany needed to discuss Puck together at all, but now she feels very glad that they did so, like their conversation silenced some doubt inside her that she hadn't even known she harbored before today. She rests her head against Brittany's and closes her eyes for a long while, enjoying Brittany's warmth and the lazy, trusting way that Brittany leans against her body.

"You know I could never be sore at you, right?" Santana asks in her smallest little Brittany-voice just as the Studebaker rambles up to the depot.

Brittany just smiles, her lips so close to Santana's skin that Santana can feel the contentedness in her expression. "You're not fair, darlin'," she mumbles, sounding dreamy and half asleep.

She presses a quick kiss to Santana's collarbone, even though the Flying Dragon Changs might see it, at the same instant that the wagon rolls to a stop. A warmth blooms over Santana's whole body and something awakens inside her.

(Suddenly, Santana remembers the exact important thing that she had forgotten before.)

* * *

><p>It comes to her, clear as instant waking from a dream.<p>

Santana remembers Brittany kissing her under pillars of white circus light. She remembers that Brittany kissed her before she was ever brave enough to kiss Brittany back. She remembers so many little things—hitches in Brittany's breath and Brittany's bashful silent laughter and the way that Brittany so often can't restrain herself from staring at Santana like she can never seem to see Santana enough, no matter for how long she looks at her.

Santana remembers all of this and wonders about it, feeling poised on the edge of something vast and deep and almost too perfect to name.

(She names it.)

* * *

><p>(Is it somehow possible that Brittany loves her back?)<p>

* * *

><p>Santana carries her new recollection deep inside her and jitters because of it, feeling like she can't sit still knowing such a perfect, vibrant secret. When Santana and Brittany disembark from the Studebaker wagon at the Onawa depot, Santana lands with a flourish in the dirt, skipping a few extra steps to a stop, and hums a happy note, surpassingly pleased with herself for finally solving such an important puzzle.<p>

(It's the most important puzzle she might solve all day or maybe even ever.)

Of course, Santana still can't know for certain that Brittany does love her, but she has a good idea about it and a thousand more good ideas to consider on its account. She waits for Brittany to catch up with her, grinning all the while.

"Ma Jones must have given the coffee pot a few extra stirs this morning, huh, darlin'?" Brittany teases, watching the way Santana swivels on her spot.

(Can Santana see it there in Brittany's face? Hear it in Brittany's voice?)

Brittany reaches for Santana's little finger, but Santana twines their whole hands together instead, guiding Brittany in a circle to stop directly in front of her. It seems different standing close to Brittany today than it did yesterday, with one-thousand new memories painted upon Brittany's every inch of skin in Santana's mind. Brittany tries to keep a polite talking-distance from Santana, but Santana won't have it. She pulls Brittany to within an inch from where she stands and rests their foreheads together, not caring who might see them.

(Santana's heart feels like a magnetic compass, Brittany her true North.)

Even just this little bit of contact feels wonderful, like Santana's body had waited for it all day. She counts out the pulse in her skin and in Brittany's and sinks into the touch, feeling for the moment that she would do anything for Brittany and considering with less fear in herself than usual whether or not Brittany doesn't perhaps feel the same way about her.

"Hi," Santana says.

"Hi," Brittany says back, giggling.

Santana stares deeply into Brittany's eyes. She can't see any tiger gold or unpaintable blue in Brittany's irises. Instead, she finds only dark upon dark and darker still shadowing Brittany's face. Dawn has yet to break along the horizon, but the silver moon that will be full when next it rises hangs overhead, setting a bare and gossamer light over the rail yards. Santana feels Brittany's breath catch behind her lips and wonders if Brittany hopes that they'll kiss.

Anyone else in the world might flinch away from Santana, standing so close to her in a public place, playing the fool with so many people to see it, but Brittany doesn't. Brittany only waits, breathless, allowing Santana to search her out and to learn her morning eyes in the same way one might learn a new room in the dark dead of night with no lamps to light the way before her, by guesswork and sensation alone.

Santana gives the most imperceptible nod, and Brittany returns it, following Santana's lips, though not kissing her.

Has Santana really just figured out one of Brittany's biggest secrets?

(Is it really a secret at all? Was it ever?)

Santana wonders if she can see it in Brittany's face. Do traces of it linger along the graceful bow in Brittany's lips? Is that it, there, in the darkest deep of Brittany's eyes? Can Santana feel it in Brittany's breath against her skin or pulsing through Brittany's fingertips, set at running pace?

For a second, Santana considers simply asking Brittany her question.

_Do you love me, BrittBritt?_

Santana feels almost certain that she wouldn't mind hearing Brittany's answer, but somehow she can't bring herself to speak to break the spell that binds them for the moment—and especially not in such a public setting. It feels like the kind of question Santana ought to ask Brittany when they're alone together, when it's just them.

(When they're their own secret.)

A bell clangs from the platform and suddenly both girls remember where they stand. Brittany's pulse quickens and Santana can feel it, strong.

"What do you think about catching the train?" Brittany asks, glancing toward the station. She doesn't move at all.

"We should probably do it," Santana consents, not moving at all, either.

"Mr. Adams did buy us tickets," Brittany says wisely, and when she smiles, Santana feels it rather than sees it, almost like a kiss.

"Well, then, let's go, Miss Brittany," Santana says, almost kissing Brittany back.

The girls peel apart. The world around them seems no different for their exchange, but Santana's hope that Brittany might love her thrums much stronger in her breast than it did at first. Though Santana can't know for sure if Brittany does love her until Brittany says the words herself, Santana feels surer about Brittany on the whole than she ever has before. People rush around them, finding open places to ride along the train. Brittany leads Santana toward a middle car, and Santana follows, willing.

(What if Santana and Brittany are just special? What if they can love each other, though it should be impossible for them to do it?)

"How do you feel about blue today?" Brittany asks, pointing to a blue boxcar.

"Blue's my favorite," Santana says honestly, thinking of one-thousand things that have nothing to do with the color of the train, and Brittany nods, pleased.

The two girls help each other scramble into the cabin, pulling each other up at the elbows and holding back each other's skirts so that they don't snag on the hitches along the door. The car carries only a handful of other circus folk so far: Rachel Berry, still wearing her plainclothes from yesterday; her father and his quadroon manservant; the Famed Giantess of Akron; and the young, dopey clown who shares Blaine's tent, whose name Santana has yet to learn, despite the fact that he lives next door to her. A few supes clamber into the car behind Brittany and Santana, jawing and joking with one another as they find places to sit.

Right away, Brittany points Santana to a corner and they take a seat together, resuming their position from the Studebaker wagon, their heads rested against each other and their hips bumped up close. Brittany breathes in deep pulls, and Santana wonders if Brittany won't fall asleep along the way to Storm Lake.

Unfortunately, she doesn't get the chance to find out before Rachel Berry interrupts the moment, scrambling over to join Brittany and Santana in their corner just as the signalman at the station sounds his whistle and the train lurches into motion.

"I see you're not riding with your father today, Brittany," Rachel says by way of greeting, setting down in front of Brittany and Santana, crossing her legs and daintily arranging her skirts around her knees, her actions prim and careful.

Rachel obviously intends to stay put for a while.

Santana immediately dislikes Rachel's tone; Rachel sounds vaguely accusatory, as if Brittany has somehow shirked a duty. Santana bristles, holding Brittany close to her. Now that Santana knows how very much Brittany dislikes it when Rachel bosses her, Santana intends to prevent Rachel from bossing Brittany however she can.

"And I see you've decided not to sit with your father today," Santana says acidly, fixing Rachel with a look that she hopes will make it plain that Rachel isn't welcome to intrude upon her and Brittany's private company.

Though there's no way Rachel didn't hear Santana, she certainly acts as if she didn't.

"You two have become very fast friends, haven't you?" Rachel says.

She seems as pleased with herself for noticing Brittany and Santana's fondness for each other as if their fondness were some heretofore undiscovered island in the Pacific and she an explorer who had just navigated her way to it by her own genius, planting her personal flag upon its soil.

The way Rachel searches Brittany and Santana up and down with such bright eyes causes Santana to squirm. Santana doesn't know what Rachel's getting on about, but she knows that she certainly doesn't like Rachel's mounting interest in her and Brittany's friendship.

(Or whatever it is, really.)

(Being in love with each other?)

Brittany doesn't seem to like Rachel's interest in it, either.

"Friendship isn't a race, Rachel," Brittany says matter-of-factly, and, even though Santana can't see Brittany's face given their sitting arrangements, Santana knows that Brittany wears her blank, joking expression, feigning total seriousness to cause Rachel bafflement.

It works.

At first Rachel blinks at Brittany, not precisely certain as to how to respond to her, but then Rachel shakes her head, clearing her confusion.

"No, Brittany," Rachel says, her tone somewhere between pitying and put-upon.

When she next addresses Brittany, she does so in the way one might a very small, very unreasonable child, loudly and with an exaggerated precision to her words.

"I didn't mean you raced to become friends," she explains. "I just meant that you and Santana have become quite inseparable very quickly and that it surprises me to see two such very different people as yourselves so inexplicably fond of each other, and especially considering that you've only known each other for one week altogether."

"We separate sometimes," Brittany says blankly. "Like when we go to sleep at night. And Santana doesn't come onstage during the knife act. That would be dangerous."

Even though Rachel has known Brittany for her whole life, she apparently doesn't know enough about Brittany to understand Brittany's jokes.

(And maybe Brittany likes it that way.)

Rachel pulls a face and looks to Santana for help; Santana doesn't offer any.

Instead, she shrugs. "Once, it took me until just before the matinee to even find Brittany," she says seriously. "That was awful."

"Harrowing," Brittany agrees.

(Santana shouldn't feel so thrilled to hear Brittany say so, but—)

Rachel seems to realize then that she won't get a genuine answer out of either Brittany or Santana, no matter how she precisely phrases her questions. She gapes at them. Santana would like to think that their almost professional degree of unhelpfulness may somehow impress Rachel, though mostly she just hopes that it will teach Rachel not to pry into matters that don't concern her, and especially not with such condescension mixed into her prying.

What does Rachel mean that Brittany and Santana's fondness for one another is inexplicable anyway? They fit perfectly together—even Ma Jones seems to think so. Santana resents Rachel for implying anything concerning Brittany and Santana otherwise and so hardly feels guilty for saying something that she hopes will end their conversation.

"In fact, it was almost just as wretched as when certain persons offer us unsolicited critiques about our friendship," she says, mimicking Mrs. Schuester's best acid-honey voice.

"Almost just," Brittany agrees.

Rachel at least has the decency to blush.

Her mouth falls open a little bit. She seems more confused at Brittany and Santana than hurt by their rudeness, though she is quick to say, "I think I had better go keep my father company," before she scoots back toward the wall where her father and his manservant sit, huddled up close together.

Santana knows she should feel remorse for dealing with Rachel so harshly—and not for the first time, either—but she doesn't.

Rachel shouldn't be so nosy, for one thing, and she shouldn't presume so much about Brittany and Santana's friendship with each other, for another. The way that Rachel talks to Brittany as if Brittany were a child rankles at Santana. It's Rachel who can't keep up with Brittany's quick wit and not the other way around, after all. And just because Brittany and Santana aren't entirely similar to each other doesn't mean they shouldn't be inseparable.

What does Rachel Berry know anyway?

(After all, Rachel has never been in love with the most perfect girl in the world and maybe, possibly, had that most perfect girl love her back.)

* * *

><p>Once the train gets rolling, no one pays attention to Brittany and Santana—and especially not now that they've confounded Rachel Berry so thoroughly that she no longer wishes to speak to them and probably won't for some time. Brittany nestles deeper against Santana's body and whispers to her, wicked.<p>

"Last Christmas, Rachel told me I might make more friends if I just stopped talking around camp," she says.

Santana gasps. "She didn't!" she says, scandalized. "Rachel Berry honestly told _you_ to stop talking?"

Brittany giggles.

"Yup, she did," she nods. "It was at the Christmas Eve dance, too. Finn Hudson asked me to waltz, but he takes bigger steps than Methuselah and always crushes my toes, so I told him I couldn't dance with him because he has elephant feet. After that, Rachel got sore with me and said I shouldn't talk so much because I always say things I don't mean. I did mean what I said about Finn's feet, though, or otherwise I wouldn't have said it."

Santana laughs and strokes Brittany's hair, just behind Brittany's ear, delighted. Brittany's story does pique her curiosity, though. "The circus has a Christmas Eve dance?" Santana asks, trying and failing to keep any hopefulness from seeping into her voice.

(Is the dance part of a show or a tradition on a down day? Does everyone dress up in fine clothing and Christmas ribbons? Brittany would look so beautiful—)

Santana's only experience with Christmas Eve comes from holidays spent at the bachelor cottage, the air inside the parlor warmed by the stove and sweet with the scent of pork _pasteles_ cooking in the kitchen. Santana remembers looking out the bay window frosted over with cursive rime toward the rooftops of Manhattan, softer and somehow dreamier than usual under clouds and condensation and cold, beyond the garden walls.

Though she tries to envision it, Santana can't picture what the white city at the circus might look like, blanketed beneath a quilt of pure December white.

"How does the circus perform in the snow?" Santana wonders aloud before Brittany can even answer her first question.

(Would the big top sag if there were a blizzard? Would the zebras all but disappear except for their black stripes against the winter brightness of their pen?)

Brittany sits up and turns to face Santana. She wears a small, fervent smile, like the fact that Santana would even wonder such a particular thing about the circus somehow delights her.

"We spend winters down in Rapides Parish, Louisiana. There isn't ever snow at Christmas, which is probably a good thing, since I don't think the elephants would like it very much if there were," she explains. "Mr. Adams and Arthur visit the Carolinas to take in some sea air, and the company spends a few months working on new acts and resting up in the meanwhile. We stop traveling in October and start up again in April once the weather gets nice. Some of the fellas take jobs in Le Compte during the winter months, and Daddy does some trapping in the bayou and sells his catches to the gillies. There's still plenty to do around camp, though, even without the shows."

Santana has never experienced a winter without snow, but, then again, she's never experienced a winter with the circus, either. She spent so many years learning all her grandmother's winter works and so many Puerto Rican traditions that she finds it hard to envision a winter filled with anything else but them.

"I can't imagine Christmas at the circus," Santana admits.

Brittany reaches for Santana's hand, squeezing it. "It's all right, darlin'. I'll show you everything once we get there," she promises, sweet and sure.

Santana can't help but grin at Brittany's word.

When Puck first brought Santana away from New York, Santana dreaded spending even a day at the circus, let alone a whole season there, but now she finds she can hardly wait to spend her first Christmas with the circus—her first Christmas with Brittany, really.

Santana knows nothing about Louisiana or the bayou or what it will feel like to go though seven whole months of down days all on end, but she finds herself thrilled at the prospect of learning all about those things from Brittany and about staying at the circus with Brittany for good. She gives Brittany's hand a squeeze in return.

_I love you._

How easy would it be for Santana to just say it? As easy as Brittany's promise to help Santana navigate the circus come winter?

"Okay," Santana says, sweet and so, so sure.

* * *

><p>Santana and Brittany watch the sun rise beyond the open boxcar door, painting the sky in searing ochre and vivid pink. Bright light burns their eyes, and, despite the early hour, the temperature inside the boxcar soars. The men doff their jackets and roll their shirtsleeves, wiping their brows with handkerchiefs, cleaning away their sweat. The women peel back their skirts, uncovering their ankles and calves in hopes that they might catch a breeze, modesty be damned.<p>

A pink tinge rises to Brittany's cheeks, and Santana finds herself hating her own thick gypsy costume. The boxcar may as well be an oven. Brittany fans Santana with her flatted hand, and Santana returns the favor, though to not very much effect. Their conversation waxes sluggish, almost stilling in the heat. On the other side of the cabin, Rachel Berry complains loudly about how dehydration isn't good for her voice. No one even has the energy to shush her from saying so.

* * *

><p>It takes nearly two hours to reach Storm Lake from Onawa.<p>

By the time the train rolls into the station, Santana feels almost melted. Though she had anticipated that the air outside the stuffy boxcar would be cooler than the air inside it, when she hops onto the platform, she finds herself sorely mistaken.

Storm Lake may as well be the third ring in the seventh circle of Dante's Hell.

The ground at the train station sears the bottoms of Santana and Brittany's bare feet until they search out some shade in which to stand. Jesse St. James' big cats complain loudly, bellowing from the kiln-like belly of their wagon cage. Sam and Blaine attempt to apply clown make up to one another's faces only to have it melt down their cheeks almost right away, turning them from sad buffoons into grotesque madmen in an instant, creating them as deranged characters out of one of Mr. Stevenson's tales. Someone reports that the thermometer at the depot reads ninety-two degrees, with the temperature still climbing.

"It's not even noon yet," Santana grumbles as she and Brittany pull themselves onto the side of a buggy, panting.

Yesterday's rainstorm cool-front seems one-thousand miles away.

Storm Lake proves a substantial town, much bigger than Onawa, with tall, Gothic buildings made from red and yellow brick, some of them several stories in height. An imposing county courthouse with pointed spires rises up from the heart of town, casting long, sharp shadows down the main street. The whole settlement borders a sparse tree line and, beyond that, a sizable lake with deep, cobalt waters.

Santana hopes that maybe the circus will make its camp beside the lake, if only because she knows that temperatures tend to drop along shorelines.

The people of Storm Lake appear well-dressed and rather well-to-do, not dissimilar to Santana's former neighbors at the bachelor cottage in Gramercy Park. Some of them stand leaned up against bicycles, others of them gather beside handsome carriages with well-groomed horses.

Storm Lake certainly doesn't seem like the typical farm town.

(When Santana spots a sign in one of the store windows advertising the "Storm Lake Resort at Kinge's Point," she suddenly understands why.)

The circus parade into town starts out far less lively than it usually might, with the circus folk too hot to put much energy into their performances and the townspeople too hot to properly applaud their meager efforts.

As the sun rises ever higher in the sky, the metal bars on the side of the buggy begin to burn Brittany and Santana's palms like hot irons, so they jump down to walk on the street. The girls try their best to wave to the townspeople, but even Brittany's typically resplendent show-smile seems less animated than it normally would under the oppressive heat. Santana's dark hair soaks in sunlight, trapping it close to her skin, causing her neck and head to sweat profusely. The boys shuffle along in their knight costumes beside Brittany and Santana, miserable in their felt shifts, not even bothering to stage sword-fights.

The heat exhaustion must show on the circus folks' faces.

But.

Just as the circus passes the post office, Santana feels liquid spatter on her skin.

Water.

For the briefest instant, she wonders if it isn't another sunshower, like the one from yesterday, but then she looks up to see an old woman hanging halfway out a second story apartment window, posed in a casting motion, her arms extended, holding a recently-emptied bucket. The woman waves down to the street, pleased that someone noticed her attempted hospitality.

"Britt," Santana says, grabbing onto the sash at Brittany's waist and tugging her to a stop, pointing up to where old woman waves down from the open window. Sam and Santana's young, dopey-faced clown neighbor shamble to a halt behind the girls, pausing to look up, too.

Another window opens, this one with a girl not much younger than Brittany and Santana hanging through it. The girl waves down to the circus performers gathered below her on the street before hefting a steel washbasin to the sill, water sloshing over its side. Instinctively, Brittany, Santana, and the clowns move closer to the window, hovering just below its ledge. The girl tosses the contents of the basin down over them in one jerking pull.

The water falls in a drove rather than a spatter, most of it dousing Brittany's left shoulder, but some of it rebounding onto Santana's face and through her shirt in a spray. It isn't exactly cold, but it still feels a bit like heaven.

More and more windows start to open on either side of the street and so do some doors, with townsfolk rushing outside carrying pails and washtubs filled with water.

Santana can't help but grin.

She shares her smile with Brittany.

In the next instant, Brittany reaches out, linking her pinky finger to Santana's. With a rapscallion grin, she tugs Santana toward the next window, spinning them in a circle, so that they almost seem like dancers. Their motion must delight the people in the windows because no fewer than three bucketfuls of water rain down on them almost right away, splattering over their skin and saturating the scorched earth beneath their bare feet. Brittany strikes one of her lively poses from the knife throwing act, and Santana gives a little curtsy alongside her; the townsfolk in the windows clap.

Santana feels much cooler and better than she did before already.

All around Brittany and Santana, the other circus performers seem to catch on to the game; if they perform, the townspeople reward them with cooling showers.

The clowns take heart and begin to chase one another; the acrobats turn somersaults along the sidewalks. The boys in their knight shifts jab at one another with their swords, waging wooden war just beneath the nearest open windows and along the edges of the crowds, within a few feet of the closest buckets. With circus music playing up and down the street, it suddenly feels like a proper circus parade again. Jesse St. James' lions roar in their cages, and Deborah lets out a mighty harrumph from the head of the procession.

By the time the circus reaches the end of Storm Lake's main street, Santana is drenched from head to foot, with water dribbling down her hair, soaking her shirt and skirt, and glistening on the tips of her eyelashes. Brittany fares the same.

"That was really nice of them," Brittany says, jogging along to catch up with an unoccupied buggy, pulling Santana behind her until they can hop onto the wheel wells.

"It was," Santana agrees, smoothing locks of wet hair away from her face.

For a moment, she and Brittany grin at each other, enjoying the water still slicking their skin and the fact that the circus hasn't encountered any major disasters yet today, never mind the could-be malevolent moon. They loop their elbows around the bars on the back of the buggy, hanging there and breathing heavily.

The buggy passes a final building in town before trundling into the more open countryside, and something shifts between the two girls in an instant. Brittany's eyes turn fervent and deep, like they always do before Brittany kisses Santana, and Santana's body responds automatically, softening and leaning in, hopeful for Brittany's even slightest touch, a flower opening its petals to sunlight. Brittany's gaze darts from Santana's eyes to Santana's mouth and then back again. She licks her lips and swallows.

"Santana, I—," Brittany starts, looking nowhere and everywhere on Santana all at once. She pauses, stuck on her next word.

Santana's heart beats so loudly that she almost can't stand it.

"Yeah, BrittBritt?"

_(Penny for your thoughts.)_

_(One-thousand pennies, really.)_

Santana's voice sounds high and flighty, even in her own ears. Everything inside Santana livens. She knows why she would pause in a moment like this one and wonders, in spite of herself, if Brittany doesn't do it for the exact same reason. The more Santana considers the possibility, the harder her heart beats. She tries not to get ahead of herself, but she can't help it.

_(Please say you love me back.)_

Brittany draws a deep breath, reaching inside herself, scraping for some courage she doesn't seem to find, as one might do for a last scoopful of sugar at the bottom of an empty pantry jar. The bright, hopeful light that filled Brittany's eyes evanesces in an instant, replaced by something far more somber and clouded.

In a trice, Brittany changes tack, glancing one more time at Santana's face. "I think the water finally washed that syrup off your nose, darlin'," she mumbles, bashful all of a sudden.

Though Brittany flashes her cat-smile at Santana, somehow, she seems rather disappointed in herself. Brittany intended to talk about something else besides just maple syrup when she first opened her mouth, Santana knows it, she knows it, she knows it, and if Santana thinks too much about what that something else could be, her heart may well beat clean out from her chest.

Santana gives a short laugh, not from mirth but from surprise.

"Brittany Pierce!" she shrieks, almost more shocked than she would have been if Brittany had just said what Santana expected her to say—or wanted to hear, rather.

"What?" Brittany asks.

Brittany feigns blankness but speaks with that same strange twinge in her voice from yesterday. Though Brittany could perhaps fool Rachel Berry, playing unawares, she can't fool Santana, who's taken the time to learn this part of Brittany forward and back. Brittany leans toward Santana along the back of the buggy, staring as deeply into Santana's face as she did when she and Santana were alone in the tent together, touching.

For the briefest instant, Santana feels Brittany almost daring her to speak the unspoken words between them, though Brittany herself durst not, but then Brittany's daring humor changes into one that Santana almost doesn't recognize in Brittany because it reminds Santana so much of her own self.

Longing.

Brittany looks at Santana the same way that Santana looked at that old wishing star in the sky two nights ago, the unfathomable quick of her eyes even deeper than usual, with hope and want and a silent plea sewn in amidst tiger-flecked blue. It almost startles Santana to see the kind of yearning she herself so regularly feels written all over Brittany's face in such a plain script.

Though Santana had come to the conclusion that Brittany might love her, it somehow had yet to occur to Santana that Brittany might long for her in the same way that she longs for Brittany.

_(Please say you love me back.)_

It seems that the girl who always seeks Santana wants to know if she's actually found Santana for once.

Brittany has wrought her and Santana's every other first together—their conversation at the trisection of tents, their kiss on the trapeze platform in the big top, their touches in the rain-beaten tent, their dance between firefly stars on the ground and faraway stars in the sky—because Brittany is brave and Brittany is generous and Brittany doesn't mind rules or rainstorms or anyone else's devils.

Santana wants so much to be like Brittany.

For the briefest instant, everything in Santana rises to meet Brittany's challenge. Since Brittany has given them their every other first together, Santana should be the one to first say the word love and she should do it bravely, fearless for the girl who always runs to find her. She wants to say the words and can almost feel them on the tip of her tongue.

_I love you, Brittany Pierce._

But.

Then Santana looks into the deepest part of Brittany's eyes, and something in Santana falters, like a footfall in the dark that fails to connect with its anticipated stair. What if Brittany doesn't love Santana back? What if Santana has imagined what she only wishes were true? She can't say her secret, not right now, not without rehearsing it until she has it perfect, just for Brittany.

She needs just a bit more bravery that she doesn't yet have.

She needs to know for certain that Brittany loves her back.

Santana offers Brittany a sympathetic smile. She feels something strain, fragile and wanting, in her heart. "Sometimes I think you know exactly what," she says softly, reaching out to twine her little finger to Brittany's at the edge of the buggy.

It's so close but still so far from exactly what she means.

* * *

><p>Santana frets all the rest of the way to the campgrounds that she's said the wrong thing or at least failed to say the right thing and hates herself for being such a coward, but then she checks Brittany's face and finds Brittany looking wonderfully—almost suspiciously—happy, smiling so widely in the sunlight that Santana can't help but smile, too.<p>

The buggy rolls to a halt.

The circus does indeed make its camp bordering what Santana must assume is Storm Lake itself, the white city standing half-constructed upon a stretch of flat, green grass and little paintbrush trees poking up between the tents, the water so close that Santana can smell it, fishy and fetid, stale under the harsh, hot sunlight. Cicadas sound their otherworldly alarms from every tree, and other innumerable insects dart through the air, obnoxious wings beating. Company members swat at the bugs and cuss, complaining about both the heat and the pests as they hop down from their wagons.

Brittany offers Santana her hand and holds Santana's skirt out of the way of the buggy's wheel wells as Santana jumps to the earth, landing upon the grass. Santana hardly gets her footing before Brittany twirls around her, fitting their bodies up against each other, never mind the heat, snug as interlocking puzzle pieces. Brittany moves with a kind of giddy energy, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. She stops right behind Santana and clasps her arms around Santana's middle, hugging her in close from behind.

"I like it when I get to spend the mornings with you," she whispers, as if it's a secret.

(Maybe it is.)

Santana sets her arms over Brittany's. She hums, happy. "I couldn't tell," she teases, allowing Brittany to sway her on the spot, dancing her across the parched grass.

She laughs when Brittany's hair brushes her shoulders, tickling her skin, and sinks into Brittany's touch, feeling Brittany's belly against her back, Brittany's hips locked against her hips. She remembers yesterday and wants, knowing exactly what.

"We should go see the elephants," Brittany mumbles, resting her head against Santana's, rocking them back and forth like a small boat out at sea.

"Why?" Santana asks, closing her eyes, forgetting everything but Brittany for the moment.

"Because they act livelier in the heat than they do usually," Brittany says plainly, as if this fact is common knowledge, shrugging so that Santana can feel her ribs lift. After a second, Brittany adds, "I think it's because the heat reminds them of Africa, even though they haven't ever visited Africa. Isn't that strange?"

Santana quirks an eyebrow. "Isn't what strange?" she parrots back.

(As usual, Brittany doesn't seem to mind that Santana knows nothing about elephants.)

Brittany sways Santana again, moving her by the hips. "How they can remember somewhere they've never been," she explains patiently. At that, Brittany turns their rocking steps into forward-walking ones, and the invisible string tugs taut in Santana's chest.

"I don't think that's strange at all," Santana says quietly, meaning every word.

(Until one week ago, Santana had lived her whole life lonely for someone she'd never met.)

Brittany nods, rubbing her head against Santana's, their hair slipping together, and gives Santana a little squeeze around the middle. "I've never been to West Virginia," she admits. "I used to want to go there because that's where my father's father came from."

"You don't want to go anymore?" Santana wonders aloud, filling in what Brittany hasn't said and loving every minute when Brittany will tell new secrets about herself.

"Nope," Brittany says, lackadaisical, walking Santana a few more steps forward, away from the wagon bay. "Now I just want to see the elephants."

Even though Santana knows that she and Brittany oughtn't to shirk their chores, she still allows Brittany to lead her away, wanting to go where Brittany wants to go, loving Brittany's touch and loving Brittany so much that she can hardly do anything for it. She only feels vaguely guilty as they slip past the last vehicle, separating themselves from the rest of the company. She holds on tightly to Brittany's arms.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay," Brittany says back.

* * *

><p>The girls make it all of ten steps before Mrs. Schuester catches up with them, materializing as suddenly as one of Mr. Poe's apparitions, turning a corner around a congregation of wagons. Mrs. Schuester stands in the blazing sun, Brittany and Santana in shadow.<p>

Though Mrs. Schuester usually appears somewhat made up, today she appears particularly unkempt and frantic, and Santana doesn't know whether to blame heat or impending deadlines for her obvious discomfiture.

Stray hairs poke out from Mrs. Schuester's typically well-maintained bun, and Mrs. Schuester's face shines with perspiration, the slight rouge on her cheeks dripping like Sam and Blaine's clown make up. Wet spots ring Mrs. Schuester's blouse under her arms and around her shirt collar, and her wide, unblinking eyes seem even more restless than usual, darting here and there between Santana and Brittany, quick and furious as lightning.

"Where do you two think you're going?" Mrs. Schuester snips. "You're not about to sneak off again, are you? There's work to be done around here, and it's no fair that the rest of us should do it when you two won't even lift a finger!"

Brittany and Santana peel apart from each other and turn to face Mrs. Schuester.

Santana hates that Mrs. Schuester thinks that she and Brittany are lazy because, really, they aren't. It's not that they want to avoid work—it's just that sometimes they want so much to spend time with each other that they can't find time to do both that and their work at once. A guilty feeling nags at the pit of Santana's stomach.

"What would you like us to do, ma'am?" she asks, staring at her toes.

If her question pleases Mrs. Schuester at all, Mrs. Schuester certainly doesn't show it.

Mrs. Schuester huffs. "The elephant blankets have very nearly lost all their sequins and beads. My seamstresses haven't any time for embroidering them, what with finishing up the touches on all the new costumes for the extravaganza, so I need you two to do it," she says. "But I can't have you fouling things up! How is your beadwork, Santana?"

The truth is that though Santana hates beadwork—which is even more tedious a task than regular sewing—she actually has quite the accomplished hand when it comes to embroidery, for she and her grandmother spent many hours decorating pillows and table runners in the bachelor cottage with seed beads and millefiori.

As much as Santana might like to lie about her own accomplishments with beadwork and downplay them, she knows she oughtn't to do so when Mrs. Schuester seems so desperate for her help, and especially not when she and Brittany have already gotten themselves into trouble today.

"Fair," she mumbles, shuffling her toes in the grass.

(Brittany stirs beside her, interested.)

"All right," Mrs. Schuester says. "Then it will be your job to make sure that Brittany doesn't botch the work with her clumsy stitches. I want these blankets to look handsome, mind you, and you need to finish them in time for the extravaganza tomorrow night—so no lollygagging!"

"Yes, ma'am."

Santana and Brittany answer together, but Santana can't help but notice how forlorn Brittany sounds in comparison to herself. Suddenly, Santana hates Mrs. Schuester for causing Brittany to feel so inadequate. Brittany's stitching isn't clumsy at all—certainly not to the degree that Mrs. Schuester makes it out to be. Brittany doesn't need Santana to babysit her at chores. Santana bristles but knows that she can't say anything to refute Mrs. Schuester according to the rules.

"Come along to the dressing tents," Mrs. Schuester instructs. "I'll give you your work there, and then you can take it someplace else, so you don't bother my seamstr—"

"Brittany! Baby girl!"

Santana flinches at the sound of Daniel Pierce's ragged voice.

He emerges from the wagon bay, just as haggard as usual. Instead of his typical buckskins, he wears plainclothes, dressed like a yeoman farmer in a white work shirt, cotton slacks, black galluses, leather boots, and a flat-brimmed hat. A Bowie knife hangs from his belt in a brown leather sheaf, long and dangerously sharp. He squints against the sunlight despite the shade his hat affords him and grimaces, seeming somehow pained.

"Mr. Pierce!" Mrs. Schuester says, as surprised to see him as Santana is.

"Mrs. Schuester," Mr. Pierce returns, tipping his hat to her. He still wears his pained expression. He nods to Brittany. "Come on, baby girl. We've got to go to town."

He seems either oblivious to the fact that Mrs. Schuester just commissioned Brittany to do work for her or apathetic to it. In either case, Mrs. Schuester makes no attempts to dispute his claim over Brittany. Rules are rules are rules, Santana supposes, even for the ringmaster's wife. Brittany glances between Mrs. Schuester, her father, and Santana, biting her lip between her teeth.

"Daddy?" she says gingerly. "May Santana come to town with us?"

Oh God.

Santana's eyes open wider than before, and she all but starts. Though she very much wants to remain with Brittany, she can't imagine that either Mr. Pierce or Mrs. Schuester will permit her to do so. Suddenly, she feels both very embarrassed and very nervous all at once, though also very flattered because Brittany never seems to see any of her innumerable deficiencies, despite how everyone else in the world very easily does so.

(Brittany always sees Santana, just so, just so, just so.)

Of course, there are rules about where Santana can go and with whom, and even though Brittany likes to ignore them, Santana doesn't suppose that Brittany's father will do so, too. Though Santana realizes that the worst thing Mr. Pierce can say in response to Brittany's question is no, she somehow feels as if this moment has so much more at stake in it than just a simple trip into town.

Mr. Pierce looks from his daughter to Santana. His squint lifts and, for a second, Santana sees the inimitable blue of his eyes, cattish and so like Brittany's. He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

"Oh," he says, clearly taken aback by Brittany's request. He eyes Santana up and down. "I suppose, if she likes," he says, a funny twinge in his voice. He sounds somehow younger and brighter than usual.

Santana's heart immediately floods with relief, happiness, and a certain dizzy sensation. She feels quite like she imagines Alice might have felt in Wonderland when floor and ceiling switched places and doors moved and nothing stayed in place as it ought to have done. She can't hide the grin on her face and also can't help from glancing at Brittany, who mirrors her excitement.

It's almost as if Santana has won some prize, though she doesn't know what that prize is exactly.

Except.

Mrs. Schuester exhales noisily and crosses her arms over her apron. Though she doesn't voice any outward complaints, it couldn't be more obvious to everyone that she dislikes the idea of Santana accompanying the Pierces into town.

Mr. Pierce meets Mrs. Schuester's eyes. "Is there something the matter, ma'am?" he asks plainly.

Mrs. Schuester feigns surprise that Mr. Pierce would notice her displeasure but can't entirely mask the covetousness in her eyes when she looks at Santana.

"Not at all," she says airily, though it couldn't be plainer that what she really means is _Yes, of course_ and _I want Santana to stay here to work for me_.

Santana supposes that this is the way that Mrs. Schuester badgers her husband Will into doing things for her—by insinuating favors rather than asking for them outright until Will can't help but feel guilty enough to give in to her at last, though he may not genuinely feel inclined to do so. Mrs. Schuester shifts her weight between her feet and waits for Mr. Pierce to relinquish Santana back into her charge. She wears a self-satisfied smile.

Mr. Pierce doesn't relinquish Santana to Mrs. Schuester's charge, though.

Honestly, Santana would believe that Mr. Pierce simply didn't catch on to Mrs. Schuester's scheming backwards talk except that Santana knows Brittany and can't help but wonder if Brittany didn't inherit her talent for baffling people from her daddy, now that Santana sees him in action.

Mr. Pierce's face blanks. "Oh," he says. "All right, then. Good day, Mrs. Schuester"—he tips his hat to her—"Come on, girls. You best wear shoes into town. You do have shoes, don't you?"

Mr. Pierce has never spoken directly to Santana before now.

Santana jolts.

"Oh, yes, sir," she says quickly. "I do, sir."

Santana looks again to Brittany and finds Brittany eager and breathless, wearing an open-mouthed smile that lights her whole face. Something flitters in Santana's chest. She feels her lucky penny feeling all over her skin and deep inside her.

"Okay," Mr. Pierce says. "Hurry up, then. I'll wait here for you."

He doesn't need to tell either Santana or Brittany to go twice.

Brittany latches onto Santana's pinky finger and leads her in the direction of the white city, only partially constructed, still at its knees. Santana watches over her shoulder just long enough to see Mrs. Schuester stomp off in the direction of the midway, thoroughly miffed at losing both Santana and Brittany's help all in one go. Though Santana should perhaps feel guilty for shirking the work that Mrs. Schuester would have given her, she really can't fuss about it—not when the prospect of accompanying Brittany into town thrills her so very much.

Once she and Brittany pass the first row of tents and find themselves alone, they break into a run.

"I can't believe you asked your father if I could come to town with you!" Santana teases.

"And I can't believe Daddy said that you could!" Brittany teases back.

Both girls laugh, though nothing seems particularly funny between them, and a swell of carefree rises in Santana. Maybe Brittany does love her after all. Maybe it would be okay to tell Brittany her secret. Maybe once they get back from town, Santana will just say it. Maybe it will make Brittany happy to know the truth.

(Santana wants nothing more than that.)

The girls careen around a corner. "I told Daddy all about you the other day," Brittany says, as artless as if she were discussing the weather. Santana's eyes must bug because Brittany quickly amends, "Well, not _everything_-everything about you. I just mean that I told him that you came from New York City and that you've read all kinds of books and that your daddy was kind of like him."

Of all the things that could catch Santana off-guard about Brittany's statement, it's the last part that does it. Santana scrunches up her brow, confused. "How?" she asks.

"Because their trades both use knives—you know, because your daddy was a surgeon," Brittany explains, matter-of-fact.

(Sometimes Brittany's logic is so wonderful that Santana can't help but want to kiss her for it.)

Santana allows the idea that Brittany would tell her father all about Santana to sink into her mind. Something flutters in her chest, but something in her also fears that Mr. Pierce may not have liked the things that Brittany told him about her. Santana wants to ask Brittany what her father said during the course of their conversation but can't quite think of how to word her question, for she couldn't explain why it feels so important to her that Mr. Pierce not dislike her if she were to try it.

(She strokes the thread ring around her finger, absentminded.)

Santana never gets the chance to ask her question anyway because, in the next moment, Brittany releases her hold on Santana's pinky finger, stepping away from her once they reach Santana's tent row. Brittany beams at Santana under the sunlight.

"You get your shoes, darlin', and I'll go get mine. I'll meet you back at the wagons, okay?"

"Sure thing."

Santana doesn't wait for Brittany to fully disappear down the alleyway before hurrying in the direction of her own tent, eager to fetch her shoes, don them, and get back to the wagon bay as quickly as possible, so as not to disappoint Mr. Pierce.

Though Santana realizes that Mr. Pierce will probably never feel fond of her, Santana hopes that Mr. Pierce might at least learn to tolerate her friendship with Brittany. Her own father would find Brittany very agreeable if he were still alive and he and Brittany could meet, Santana feels certain about it; Santana just wants Mr. Pierce not to hate her, if she can help it.

She arrives at her tent to find it still in a heap, not yet erected, with the poles lying in a pile, horizontal to the ground, and the canvas flattened over the grass, taking on sun heat. Luckily, someone has set her and Puck's things upon the canvas.

Santana wastes no time in riffling through her valise to produce her shoes, carefully setting her "missing" tarot cards aside within the bag. Everything on her burns with heat, and her heart skips around in her chest like a little bird hopping from branch to branch, anxious and hopeful all at once.

Today, Santana remembers to wear stockings along with her shoes, though apparently not how to dress herself in them; her fingers fumble as she pulls the stockings up over her ankles, and she bites her tongue between her teeth, willing herself to work faster. Her leather shoes feel hot to the touch and take entirely too long to lace. After a few frustrating attempts at threading the laces through their proper eyeholes, Santana decides to simply stuff the laces inside her shoes without actually tying them first. She stands and brushes the grass from her skirt, still flighty inside.

"Come on," she commends herself, setting off at a sprint to meet Brittany at the wagon bay, all aflutter with nerves.

Except.

Brittany isn't at the wagon bay when Santana arrives there.

Only Mr. Pierce is.

Mr. Pierce waits alongside a farm wagon, leaned up against the back fender. He doesn't notice Santana approaching him at first—indeed, he seems rather oblivious to his surroundings altogether. He stares at his boots and mumbles words that Santana can't particularly discern under his breath, his cracked lips moving as if in private prayer. His hands curl around the edge of the wagon bed, and something in his posture strikes Santana as boyish, though he must be nearly fifty years in age.

At first, Santana doesn't know how to alert Mr. Pierce to her presence or even if she ought to say anything to him at all, considering that she doesn't want to bother the man or cause him to somehow dislike her, but then Mr. Pierce catches sight of Santana's shadow stretched out over the dry grass. He looks up, startled, but recovers in an instant.

"Brittany ain't back yet?" he asks, squinting, though he must already know the answer to his own question.

It takes Santana aback to hear Mr. Pierce speak to her.

The truth is that Santana doesn't know what to make of Mr. Pierce and that she isn't sure how to engage with him in conversation, either, even with him being the one to speak to her first.

Based on everything Santana has observed of him, Mr. Pierce is a sullen man, as rough as his daughter is beautiful. He doesn't seem especially fond of his job as a knife thrower at the circus and shows no particular enthusiasm for performance, unlike his daughter or even Puck or Rachel. He also doesn't seem especially skilled at his job, considering how often he seems to botch his throws and put Brittany in danger. He's laconic, scarce, and not particularly friendly toward anyone at the circus. He never eats with the company during mealtimes, and he seems to avoid everyone except for Brittany, if he can help it.

And he boxed Brittany's ear.

He hurt his poor baby girl.

(He hurt Santana's poor Brittany.)

Despite all of his surliness and even his violence, Brittany still seems to love him, though—and she inexplicably seems to trust him, both with her life and with her secrets, for whatever such trust is worth to him.

Santana swallows the parch in her throat and searches for something to say to Mr. Pierce, feeling suddenly like she did when she first met Mr. Adams—which is to say as if everything is wrong with her, like she's either too much or not enough in every possible way. She shivers, fearful without knowing what she fears.

She only manages a nod, but Mr. Pierce seems to accept that as a passable answer from her.

He returns the gesture and adjusts the brim of his hat, thoughtful. Quiet prevails, save for the sounds of Mr. Pierce's breath and Santana's against the windless day, the soft snuffing of the mule hitched to Mr. Pierce's wagon, the insect chatter in the air, the circus din in the distance. Santana shuffles, uncomfortable under the sun. She wishes, as she so often does, that she could be invisible.

Then.

"She makes friends real easy."

It takes Santana a full second to realize that Mr. Pierce addresses her, even though they're the only two people in sight. It takes Santana another full second to realize that Mr. Pierce refers to Brittany.

Santana never would have imagined prior to this moment that Daniel Pierce would have anything to say to her about Brittany—though, really, Brittany is the only thing that Santana and Daniel Pierce have in common.

She's their most important thing, actually.

At first, Santana's surprise that Mr. Pierce would speak to her prevents her from realizing the exact nature of what it is he said. She takes a full second to process his words.

_She makes friends real easy._

Except that Brittany doesn't.

Ma Jones told Santana that Brittany hasn't many friends at the circus at all, and Puck claims that Brittany and her daddy are as strange as anyone comes. As of lately, even Santana, who is so new at the circus, has begun to perceive traces of circus loneliness in Brittany—in Brittany's trains always leaving but never returning to station, in the heartbroken blue of Brittany's eyes, in the way that Brittany longs for a home where she's never yet been.

(The lonely girl finds light in empty corners of the circus when she wanders there searching for a far-off something else.)

(Someone else, really.)

Though Santana adores that Brittany so often saves the best parts of herself for Santana, whom she never attempts to confound in the same way that she does everyone else, Santana regrets that so few people seem to realize what apparently only Santana and Mr. Pierce know about their girl.

The thing is that what Mr. Pierce means isn't that Brittany has many friends but rather that Brittany herself is easy to love.

It isn't a secret, but somehow it feels like one.

Suddenly, it seems to Santana as if she's seeing Mr. Pierce for the first time. Her mouth falls open a bit. She searches for words and finds them surprisingly quickly, and then speaks before she can think better of doing so, wanting to say the right thing for once, her heartbeat pounding out her nervousness loudly in her ears.

"She's my best friend," she says softly.

(Santana has never been so happy just to tell the truth.)

* * *

><p>Every spell has something that will break it—magic words, a slain dragon, true love's kiss, or, in this case, Brittany appearing from just beyond the tent rows, wearing a pleased cat-smile as she approaches her two favorite people in the world. She doesn't say it aloud, but Santana hears it anyway.<p>

_Hey, darlin'!_

Everything in Santana rises to meet Brittany, and Santana shuffles a bit upon the grass, suddenly fluttery inside for a different reason than she was before. Mr. Pierce stands up from against the wagon, adjusting his hat brim again. The pained expression he wore when he first called to Brittany during her conversation with Mrs. Schuester returns to his face. He nods a greeting to his daughter but doesn't speak to her before rounding the wagon, heaving himself up onto the driver's box and taking the reins to the mule. Brittany gestures for Santana to follow her into the wagon bed.

Santana can't help but sneak a glance at Brittany's shoes as she follows Brittany over the fender, for she doesn't know when she might ever get the chance to see Brittany wearing them again.

They're old-fashioned boots with pointed toes and buttons up the sides instead of laces. The leather along their edges appears well-worn and almost threadbare. Santana imagines that the shoes could have been fine ones when someone first purchased them from the _Sears Roebuck Catalogue_ maybe a decade ago, though now they just appear shabby, not unlike Brittany's tatty, blue sundress. Their conservative style hardly seems apropos of Brittany and her typical carefree. Somehow they remind Santana of her grandmother.

Santana must make a face at them.

Brittany seems to notice it.

"They belonged to my mama," Brittany says, offering Santana an almost apologetic shrug. "They're too small for my feet." She scrunches up her nose.

(Santana feels a sweet pang play through her chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

_"Pobrecita, Brittany,"_ Santana pouts, sticking out her lip.

The girls settle into the wagon bed, sitting across from one another. Mr. Pierce gives the reins a crack, and the mule pulls the wagon forward with a lurch. Without thinking about it, Santana reaches for Brittany's legs, guiding them into her own lap so that Brittany's feet sit just in the motley hammock of her skirt. Brittany bends to her touch, pliant and relaxed.

As the wagon rumbles out of camp and onto the dirt road back to Storm Lake, Santana gathers Brittany's ankles in her hands and begins to thumb them through Brittany's shoes, rubbing little concentric circles upon Brittany's heels, absentminded, working over the bone before moving up toward Brittany's toes, much in the same way that her grandmother used to rub away her growing pains when she was a child. She hums an old San Juan song, massaging over Brittany's joints, one by one by one, falling into the same trance that binds her at her stitch work.

"You're really good at that, darlin'."

Santana looks up to find Brittany staring at her, eyes as soft as the reflection of a hunter's moon wavering upon clear water and perfectly blue, with no heartbreak in them at all. Though Brittany's mouth remains even across her face, something in Brittany seems to smile.

"At what?" Santana asks stupidly.

Brittany gives a little shrug that somehow doesn't seem little at all. A flush rises to her cheeks. "At just—," she stops short from whatever it is that she had intended to say, suddenly changing tack. "You're just good," she says.

If Mr. Pierce weren't around, Santana might shuffle onto her knees and lean forward to kiss Brittany, right in the open sunlight. As it is, she flusters, heat rising to her cheeks. She wants to explain to Brittany that she isn't good—that no bad omen is—but somehow in the moment she finds that she can't argue with Brittany's statement.

The truth of the matter is that when Santana is with Brittany, she does feel good somehow—or at least like she could be good if Brittany needed her to be so.

Santana bites her lips into her mouth and glances behind the wagon, watching the wheels kick up dust as it jostles along the uneven road, the white city growing smaller and smaller in the distance as they ride away from it. She flutters inside, the squeezing feeling in her chest tight and sweet.

"Does it help?" she asks, desperate to change the subject from her own alleged goodness, glancing down at where her hands work over Brittany's ankles.

Brittany nods enthusiastically. "Heaps," she says earnestly.

"I'm glad," Santana giggles, thumbing over Brittany's ankles.

Brittany grins and leans back against the edge of the wagon. She sighs, contented, and shuts her eyes, tilting her face up toward the sunlight. She seems sleepy and satisfied, like she did on the way to the train depot in Onawa, as comfortable as a cat in an afternoon windowsill. The day glow overhead brings out the brightness in her fair complexion; she's the kind of beautiful that an author could never capture in prose, no matter how long his book, and she only seems more so for her comfortableness at the moment.

"You could just do that forever, if you liked," Brittany mumbles, dreamy.

Santana nods. "Okay," she says.

She means it like a promise.

* * *

><p>Mr. Pierce drives the wagon straight into the downtown area of Storm Lake and parks it alongside one of the promenades, driving the mule a few extra paces to straighten out the wheels before he stops.<p>

In the next moment, he hops down from the driver's box and unhitches the back flap on the wagon bed—Santana hadn't noticed it had a hinge—allowing Brittany and Santana down onto the street. The two Pierces and Santana squint heavily against the fierce sunlight, and they're not the only ones who do so; Storm Lake looks like a city roasting in the heart of a furnace fire, with harsh glares reflecting from the shop windows and the metalwork decorating the streetlamps.

Very few people roam the main street, and those who do hide in what little shade there is under the storefront awnings, shielding their eyes with their hands and fanning themselves with handkerchiefs and scraps of folded paper. Dogs plod along, open-mouthed, high stepping over the hot dirt beneath their paws, their tongues long, pink, and dried out. Nearly everyone in sight sports great wet spots around their collars and underarms, even the ladies in their pretty Sunday dresses.

Once Brittany and Santana step out of his way, Mr. Pierces closes up the flap on the wagon and fixes Brittany with a serious look, ignoring Santana entirely.

"All right," he says, mumbling as if speaking around a plug of chaw, though he has nothing in his mouth that Santana can see. "I'm going to visit the cobbler"—he gestures to a shop somewhere in the distance—"to see if I can't have my boots resoled, and then Mr. Adams has asked that I procure some supplies from town for the company. Go ahead and see the town, but listen for me to call you because I might need an extra pair of hands at the store. Here"—he fishes in his pants' pocket and produces a whole shiny Liberty Head nickel for his efforts—"You go on and buy yourself some sarsaparilla, baby girl. Don't say nothin' to no gillies now."

"Yes, Daddy," Brittany says sweetly, accepting the gift, biting at her lip so as to contain her excitement.

(Her eyes look wide and Santana supposes that her own eyes must look wide, too.)

(A whole nickel!)

Mr. Pierce nods in reply, reaching up to stroke a lock of Brittany's hair away from her face, and she obliges him, tucking it behind her ear as one might tuck away an afterthought or a penny for a rainy day. Mr. Pierce seems to approve of her action; he cradles the back of Brittany's head in one of his broad, weathered palms, thumbing over her hair until she meets his eye.

For a brief second, it seems that Mr. Pierce might say something more to Brittany than he did at first, but instead he fixes her with a deep look, searching out something in her face hidden in amongst her lonely, starlit blue, well behind the boundary where most people stop with her.

Though Santana might flinch under such intense attention from anyone—even her own father, were he still alive—Brittany remains perfectly still where she stands, allowing Mr. Pierce to see her, and, moreover, seeing him in return.

Father and daughter hold each other's gazes for a few seconds past just a simple goodbye, unpaintable blue mirroring unpaintable blue, before each one of them suddenly seems to arrive at the destination of his and her search all at once. Mr. Pierce nods again, as if he and Brittany have come to some sort of unspoken understanding, and he gives Brittany's hair a final stroke before turning away from her.

Santana isn't sure what she's just seen.

Brittany seems entirely oblivious to Santana's confusion, though.

As Mr. Pierce approaches a young boy crouched alongside the promenade and asks him if he won't watch after the mule and wagon in exchange for a penny while Mr. Pierce attends his errands, Brittany meets Santana with a grin.

"Would you like to split a sarsaparilla with me, darlin'?" she asks, rocking up on the balls on her feet, so breathless and dizzy that Santana almost has to laugh at her for it.

"Only if you want to share," Santana says, trying and failing to suppress a dizzy grin of her own.

"Do I ever," Brittany says, taking Santana by the pinky.

(Santana allows Brittany to lead her away.)

(She'd follow Brittany anywhere, down any road, really.)

* * *

><p>As soon as Brittany leads Santana into the general store, Santana realizes two things: first, that no one in Storm Lake has ever seen someone like her before, and, second, that Storm Lake is the most affluent city that the J.P. Adams &amp; Son Traveling Circus &amp; Menagerie has visited along its present route since she joined its number.<p>

While the general store in Onawa was small, cramped, and overstocked with goods, the general store in Storm Lake sprawls with many tall wooden shelves and glass cases up against the counters.

Unlike the store in Onawa, Storm Lake's store hardly sells a lick of farm equipment. Instead, its merchandise consists mostly of household appliances, like Seely electric flatirons and "fully modern iceboxes," China dishware with pretty blue markings all along its edges, riding gloves for ladies, bathing trousers for gentlemen, and a vast array of toys for children, all conspicuously placed at waist-height along the shelves, right where a toddler might grab for them.

The sheer abundance of all the goods both delights and daunts Santana, who scarcely knows what to look at first, until she happens to glance across the room and spies the stout shopkeeper and his wife.

Both persons fix her with the kind of glare that she never encountered prior to her stay in the Tenderloin district, and their mouths stretch as if they've just tasted something particularly sour. They keep their arms folded over their chests, forming a solid barrier between them and Santana, the object of their distaste.

Even so, a certain curiosity shines through their repulsion; they follow Santana around the room with their eyes, learning the texture of her hair without touching it, the color of her skin without liking it, and everything else about her without actually knowing her at all.

They see everything and nothing about Santana all at once and seem particularly interested in the way Brittany tugs Santana along by the pinky finger, distrustful of, appalled at, and also secretly awed by it.

(Santana spies a set of child-shaped saltshakers upon a shelf, their faces black like slate, their lips red, their eyes wide and oblong—$1.05.)

(She hasn't seen anyone with a complexion darker than Brittany's in town so far.)

Santana holds her breath all the way to the front of the store, where Brittany greets the shopkeepers, making no apology for Santana's presence and neither any special mention of it.

"G'morning! Do you sell sarsaparilla here?" she asks gamely, moseying up towards the counter, Santana following along behind her, a kite attached to Brittany's wrist by a string.

Brittany smiles widely, but the shopkeeper and his wife don't return her amiable look.

They furrow their brows at her and the shopkeeper makes a brusque gesture toward a sign on the wall behind the cash register: ICE COLD SARSAPARILLA, 3¢ PER BOTTLE. The sign features an etched illustration of a full bottle of sarsaparilla tilted on its side and pouring into a little tonic cup, with a round logo beside that. Upon closer inspection, Santana sees that the logo reads: AYER'S, THE ONLY SARSAPARILLA ADMITTED TO THE 1893 WORLD'S FAIR, CHICAGO.

(It's an impressive boast.)

For the briefest second, Santana feels nervous, knowing that she can read the sign while Brittany cannot, and she wonders if she oughtn't to whisper to Brittany what the sign says so as to avoid any confusion between Brittany and the shopkeepers, but then Santana remembers that the sign features an illustration, which means that Brittany can probably understand it very well on her own, never mind the print.

Sure enough, Brittany offers the shopkeeper a smile.

"We'll take one bottle, please," she says, and Santana can't help but wonder if she didn't choose her words precisely with the intent to ruffle the shopkeepers, who glance at Santana warily as Brittany extends her nickel to them and they accept it.

The shopkeeper's wife bustles off, disappearing through a door behind the counter, while the shopkeeper himself wrestles with the register, entering the total for Brittany's purchase and pumping the lever to open the drawer to provide her with the appropriate change. The whole time he works, he never says a word to Brittany, and he never takes his eyes off Santana.

(As if she might do something uncivil, standing all of two feet away from him.)

For her part, Santana pretends to find something very interesting on the floorboards and diverts her eyes, waiting for Brittany to finish her transaction with the man while keeping tight hold to Brittany's little finger all the while. When the door behind the counter opens again, Santana looks up to see the shopkeeper's wife emerge clutching a tall, clear glass bottle filled with brown liquid, the bottle's contents sloshing from side to side with her every step. In her other hand, the shopkeeper's wife holds what looks like an overly large key head—a bottle opener—which she uses to dislodge the flat, tin bottle cap from Brittany's purchase.

After checking with her husband to ensure that the transaction is complete and that Brittany has paid for the sarsaparilla in full—all done at a glance—the shopkeeper's wife offers the bottle to Brittany, along with the tersest smile Santana has ever seen.

(The woman could give Mrs. Schuester lessons.)

"Fresh out of the icebox," she says in a pinched voice.

"Thank you, ma'am," Brittany replies, returning grace for ungraciousness.

"Thank you," Santana mumbles so quietly that it would surprise her if Brittany could even hear it, standing inches away.

(Though Santana's grandmother always taught her to be polite, Santana doesn't quite know for certain what the rules would have her do, given the situation.)

Santana watches Brittany's shoed heels as they lead her away from the counter, out the door to the store, and back onto the promenade.

It's only when Brittany stops walking that Santana dares to look up and meet her eyes.

She finds Brittany considering her, wearing an almost guilty expression.

"You get the first sip of sarsaparilla, darlin'," Brittany says. "Or you can have the whole thing, if you like. If I had another penny, I'd buy another one and give them both to you, actually."

What Brittany says sounds an awful lot like an apology for something that isn't Brittany's fault at all, but it also like something else than makes Santana's heart beat on bird's wings. Santana's mouth falls open, nearly in a smile.

"When you look so sad, it breaks my heart, you know," Brittany whispers, leaning in far more closely than would strictly be necessary to hand Santana the sarsaparilla bottle. Something glints in the blackest quick of Brittany's eyes.

(Is that it, there?)

(Santana sees it like the flash of a fishtail through clear water before suddenly it swims away again, nervous, to the deep.)

"I'm not sad," Santana says, accepting the bottle, which feels marvelously cold to her touch on such a hot day. Immediately, she realizes how lame her rebuttal sounds. She amends it, "I'm never sad when I'm with you—unless you're sad, that is."

Something passes over Brittany's face, too quickly for Santana to read. Brittany gives Santana's pinky finger a little tug and begins to lead her down the promenade, window-shopping like they did yesterday in Onawa once more.

Brittany mulls over Santana's words for a moment before replying. "Well, if I'm only sad because I thought you were sad, but you're not sad unless I'm sad, then are either one of us really sad right now, darlin'?" Brittany asks, checking Santana's face to see if it's okay to smile yet.

Santana gives Brittany's question a moment of thought before she answers, "We don't have to be, I don't suppose," and breaks into a smile, her discomfort from the store all but forgotten now that she's alone with Brittany again—which is her favorite way to be, after all.

Brittany nods, thoughtful. "Well, we do have sarsaparilla," she says, as if no one who has sarsaparilla could ever truly feel sad.

Santana remembers the bottle in her hand and gives it a sip. The sarsaparilla tastes sweet and syrupy all at once but also herbal and savory like a root vegetable, with just a hint of sassafras. This Western brew boasts a stronger flavor than the Eastern kind which Santana grew accustomed to drinking in New York, and it almost causes her to cough on account of its thickness. All the same, it isn't foul to the tongue at all—indeed, quite the opposite. It just tastes vaguely medicinal in addition to being sweet, really.

(Never mind what Santana's father might tell her about how sarsaparilla couldn't cure a cold, no matter how pretty its container.)

"How is it?" Brittany asks.

Santana nods, swallowing down the last of her sip. "Swell," she says honestly. Then, "Thank you for sharing with me."

"You're welcome," Brittany says easily, giving Santana's finger a little squeeze. "Had you ever tasted sarsaparilla before today? I hadn't until last year when we stopped in Vermont and a vendor set up shop at the end of the midway and gave us all free samples. Sam and I went wild for it. Blaine didn't like his very well, though, so Sam and I split his between the two of us."

Santana nods, in total agreement. "Papa used to bring me sarsaparilla sometimes from the corner store on Friday evenings if I'd behaved myself for Abuela all week," she says, surprised at herself for revealing so much information about her life at the bachelor cottage when Brittany hadn't even asked to hear about it from her. She checks Brittany's reaction out of the corner of her eye.

(If it were Brittany who had told a secret to Santana and not the other way around, Santana knows exactly how she would feel about the matter.)

A new smile curls over Brittany's lips, one that makes her look like she's the one sipping sweet sarsaparilla rather than Santana. She swings her and Santana's hands between them and hums a note in a clear major key.

"You don't talk about your daddy very much," she notes, just so, before quickly adding, "—not that you have to talk about him, if you don't want to."

Santana hadn't realized how very little she had told Brittany concerning her father since arriving at the circus—and particularly given how very much her father has lingered on the peripheries of her mind ever since his passing. When she searches herself, she can't reckon an especially cogent reason as to why she hasn't spoken concerning the Good Doctor at length, except that she doesn't have any real answers about him, only questions, in her own mind.

She bites her lips between her teeth and passes the sarsaparilla bottle to Brittany, shrugging as she looks for the right words. "It's just," she says, speaking very slowly, her eyes tracing over Brittany's shadow upon the floorboards on the promenade, "I feel like I didn't know him as well as I thought I did. He was always just my papa, but to everyone else, he was Dr. Lucas, and I—I don't know quite what to make of that, really."

Brittany waits for Santana to say her piece, silent and attentive. She takes a sip from the sarsaparilla and then nods. "Sometimes it can take a while to figure out how to feel about big things," she says wisely.

"It can," Santana agrees.

The girls meet each other's eyes, slowing to a stop along the promenade. Suddenly, Santana's throat feels very dry, despite the fact that she just drank a sip of sarsaparilla. She wets her lip, her heart beating out strong love to Brittany against her breastbone. Brittany's eyes turn soft and fervent, like a child's prayer in faith. Santana's body responds automatically, blooming—

"Thank you," Santana says again—and quickly—just to stop herself from kissing Brittany on the sidewalk in Storm Lake, "for the sarsaparilla."

"You already said that, darlin'," Brittany grins.

"Oh," Santana says stupidly.

Brittany holds her gaze for a long while, seeing something in Santana that Santana feels certain no one else has ever—or will ever—see in her again. Brittany wears a delighted smile at the corners of her mouth, and her whole face seems bright.

"You're very sweet," she says approvingly, offering her elbow to Santana so that they can walk hip to hip alongside each other.

Santana gladly accepts her offer, laughing. "I'm not sweet to anyone but you, though," she protests. "Just ask Rachel Berry—"

"—doesn't count—"

"—or Puck—"

"—he's not sweet to you, though—"

"—or anybody at the circus, really," Santana tries to explain.

(It's difficult to explain anything with that lucky penny feeling in her belly turning somersaults like an acrobat, and especially when Brittany keeps looking at her in that way.)

Brittany shakes her head, stubborn. "I'm at the circus, darlin'," she says logically. "Why don't you ask me what I think?"

Santana giggles again, her lucky penny feeling giving another half-dozen flips. A blush burns all over her cheeks and ears. She can't very well refuse Brittany anything, even to save her own composure, in this case.

"What do you think about it, then, Miss Brittany?" Santana relents.

"I think," Brittany says very slowly, drawing out each word for effect, "that you are... the sweetest person in the whole wide world... and that Mr. Adams should put it on the marquee and charge people five dollars just to see you smile."

"Britt!"

"If we were at the circus, I'd kiss you," Brittany whispers conspiratorially, leaning in closely to Santana's ear.

"And if we were at the circus, I'd let you," Santana whispers back, finally in on the plot.

"You're not fair," they both say at the same time, dissolving into a fit of giggles.

(How is it possible that each day gets just a little bit better than the last one, as long as Santana spends her days with Brittany?)

(She's in love with the most perfect girl in the world and she's absolutely certain that the most perfect girl in the world somehow loves her back, which is just as wonderful as a wonderful thing can be.)

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana spend a long while walking the streets of Storm Lake, searching out shade wherever they can find it, trading the bottle of sarsaparilla back and forth between them until they drain it dry. Brittany elects to save the bottle—"It's pretty," she says, holding it up against the sunlight so that it refracts rainbow lattices upon the street and over her skirt—and tucks its neck under her sash, pinning it in place at her hip.<p>

When the girls pass the town bank, they overhear a businessman complain about how the temperature in town has reached one-hundred and three degrees Fahrenheit, according to the thermometer at the train depot, and Santana can easily believe it.

"Maybe if we do more tricks, someone will throw a bucket of water on us," Brittany says, glancing wistfully up at the second story windows overlooking the street.

"If we see a creek, I'll push you in it," Santana teases.

Brittany laughs. "I wouldn't even holler at you if you did," she says, nudging her hip up against Santana's. "I feel like I can't remember what rain is like, even though it rained all day yesterday. It's like the opposite of the elephants and Africa."

"Like you've forgotten something you already knew about?" Santana says knowingly.

(Santana remembers the exact important thing that she had forgotten before—she remembers, she remembers, she remembers.)

"Right," Brittany nods. She turns her face up toward the sky, as if she's talking to it, "I could sure do with a reminder. You know, any time, really."

"Brittany!" Santana laughs, her heart squeezing in her chest. She nearly doubles over, except that she remains linked to Brittany at the elbow. Instead, she stumbles along the sidewalk, allowing Brittany to steer her wherever she lists, her body pressing in close to Brittany's.

"Howdy, Miss Brittany!"

Santana had forgotten that there were other people in the world aside from herself and Brittany and jerks as a new voice—an unfamiliar, male voice—cuts into their conversation, turning to find its source.

Pirates.

That's Santana's first thought—that somehow the boys look like pirates.

There are five of them altogether, all probably between seventeen and five-and-twenty years in age, or at least old enough to shave, Santana supposes. Two of them are very short, two of them are of average height, and one is very tall—perhaps even more so than towering Finn Hudson.

The tall boy sticks out to Santana as the probable leader of the little band, for he walks in front of the group and is not only the tallest but also apparently the oldest out of the lot of them. Like his fellows, he goes shoeless over the dirt and wears his clothing almost haphazardly, the legs of his pants torn and dirty and his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. Though he sports galluses, he hasn't bothered to tuck his shirt in at the waist or even button it to the top button, despite the fact that he has no undershirt that Santana can see.

Something about him seems decidedly rough, to the point where Santana can't help but think that even Puck would cross on the other side of the street from him.

The boy—if Santana can call him a boy, given his apparent age—has a ruddy complexion, sneering mouth, narrow nose, tall forehead, with hair the color of a copper spittoon, clear and bright after a long polishing, so vivid that it reflects the sun. Santana pins him at some long shot over twenty years of age in her mind because he already boasts very faint crow's feet at the corners of his eyes and also because he appears to be balding, with tall widow's peaks climbing up along the edges of his brow, though he otherwise wears his hair long enough to pull back into a ponytail.

He and the other boys remind Santana very much of the crew of Mr. Stevenson's _Hispaniola_, though not in a comforting literary way.

At first, it confuses Santana that one of the boys called Brittany by her name, and she wonders—foolishly—if Brittany doesn't somehow know the fellow from somewhere or another.

(Maybe he's a supe at the circus whom Santana has yet to see or meet?)

But as the gang of boys draws closer to Brittany and Santana, Santana suddenly realizes that not a single one of them knows Brittany at all; they only overheard Santana saying Brittany's name and snatched it for themselves, like magpies stealing up dropped shiny coins from a sandy beachfront, where would-be bathers have dropped them.

A nervous chord thrums through Santana's body. She doesn't like how the boys look or talk at all. Immediately, she glances to Brittany to see how Brittany will react to the boys' attention.

Right at that moment, a shadow comes over Brittany's face, all her sunshine for Santana suddenly replaced by perturbation and something else that seems decidedly unfriendly toward the boys. Brittany returns Santana's glance and tightens her hold on Santana's arm, pulling Santana in more closely to her body, but she doesn't stop walking and doesn't respond to the boys saying her name.

(Santana clings to her like a man overboard will cling to the flotsam keeping him afloat.)

"Hey, Miss Brittany, we're talking to you!"

This time it's the ringleader who says it—the tall, redheaded ruffian with the untucked shirttails. Though Santana knows she oughtn't to dignify his catcalling by looking at him, she can't help but turn her head at the sound of his voice; she finds him sneering, a more sinister kind of devil in his smile than any that twists Puck's smirks or sits upon Santana's shoulder.

Immediately, Santana's heartbeat speeds and she looks up and down the street, wondering if anyone might hear her and Brittany if they were to shout for assistance. She thinks of the Tenderloin district and of the two supes who tugged her ankles on the train to Mankato and of the boys in St. James, running alongside the circus wagon and yelling _Hey-o, Gypsy Santana!_, and recoils because the boys here in Storm Lake somehow seem more dangerous than all the other ones who came before them.

Brittany doesn't stop walking, but when it becomes apparent that the boys won't relent from following her if she doesn't somehow acknowledge them, she says, just loudly enough for them to hear it, "My daddy says I oughtn't to talk to strange fellas"—which is almost true, if strange fellas and gillies are all the same thing to a circus girl.

Several of the boys laugh but not in a mirthful way.

The tall, redheaded one takes a half-dozen long strides, situating himself just behind Brittany and Santana in a trice. Again, Santana glances at him, knowing better than to do it. The boy smirks.

"Well, Miss Brittany, how about I introduce myself to you, and then I won't be a strange fella no more? My name is Richard Nelson. How do you like my name? You can have it, if you're partial to it," he says unctuously, pleased with what he must suppose is his own cleverness.

(Santana twitches. Her skin suddenly feels filthier than if she hadn't bathed in a week, just for hearing Richard Nelson speak.)

One of the younger boys crows, "Ooh! Dicky's in love!"

Richard Nelson grins. "What do you say, Miss Brittany?" he asks.

Brittany's lips thin on her face, pursed tightly together, and she stiffens at Santana's side, though she continues to walk away from the boys and doesn't ever turn to face them.

"We're still strangers because you don't know my family name," Brittany says in a way that might sound placid to the boys, who don't know her, but which seems absolutely acid to Santana, who knows Brittany very well.

Some of the boys laugh, including Richard Nelson, amused with Brittany's pertness.

Richard Nelson bites, "Well, how about you tell it to me, then, so that we can get better acquainted?"

Santana's heart pounds out thunder against her breastbone.

_Oh God. Oh God. Oh God._

She doesn't like the course of this conversation at all. The more the boys follow in her and Brittany's footsteps, the more they seem like jackals and the less they seem like pirates—in fact, pirates would be too good for them.

Santana's stomach churns, and she wonders if she won't be sick. Though she and Brittany have the whole town of Storm Lake before them, she feels hopelessly trapped and almost claustrophobic.

What would happen if she and Brittany were to run? Where could they even run to, when the boys know the town better than they do? It would be foolish to bolt down a side street or alleyway. Could they make it to a shop? Where is Mr. Pierce?

She checks Brittany's face again and isn't surprised to find a nervousness hiding at the corners of Brittany's mouth and deep in Brittany's eyes.

Brittany doesn't say anything in response to Richard Nelson's question.

Instead, she gives the slightest shake of her head.

_No._

"Ooh!" the younger boys hoot, thrilled to see their ringleader cast down before them, amused at Brittany's audacity to do it.

Richard Nelson doesn't seem half as delighted as his compatriots do. The smirk instantly fades from his face, and his mouth turns tight. It takes a full second for him to recover from Brittany's rebuff; he obviously hadn't expected her to make it. He halts where he stands, allowing Brittany and Santana to put a few extra paces between themselves and him, to the point where Santana wonders if he won't simply just watch them walk away without further harassing Brittany.

She turns to check Brittany's face again.

(She feels herself as if she'll cry at any moment and frets that Brittany might feel the same.)

_(When you look so sad, it breaks my heart, you know.)_

"Hey, cookie, why don't you tell me your miss' family name, huh?"

Santana had forgotten that other people than Brittany could see her. She had forgotten that other people could speak to her. She had forgotten herself altogether, so great was her concern for Brittany's wellbeing, in fact.

Now she wishes that Richard Nelson had forgotten all about her, too.

Santana stops walking, suddenly cold, despite the one-hundred degree temperature in Storm Lake.

_Oh God._

Brittany gives Santana's arm a tug, urging her along, but Santana can't move—can't find it in herself to even breathe, let alone to shuffle her feet.

There are rules about this, and there are things that will happen to her if she breaks those rules. So far, Brittany hasn't broken any rules in her dealings with the boys, but Santana could—and easily. Anything she says or doesn't say in this situation will inevitably be the wrong answer.

And she could get Brittany in trouble for it—and not just with the shrewish Mrs. Schuesters of the world, either.

Santana wants to scream no. She wants to yell at Richard Nelson and his boys to leave Brittany alone and to not talk to her ever again. She wants to loose a tide of Spanish from her tongue, scaring them with her alleged gypsy magic as easily as she scared the supes and all of Puck's circus friends in the past. She wants to pound the boys with her fists if they come anywhere near herself or Brittany.

She can't, though.

She can't do any of that.

She pauses, statue-still where she stands, looking at her own toes, and waits.

_Oh God._

"Hey, pickaninny!" Richard Nelson barks. "I'm talking to you! Tell us Brittany's name!"

It's an order.

Santana can see Brittany in her peripheral vision, an unreadable expression upon Brittany's face. Her own heart beats so loudly that if she isn't careful, it might spell out Brittany's surname for Richard Nelson and his boys to hear.

The rules say that someone like Santana can't refuse to follow an order from a man like Richard Nelson, even if he is a ruffian, but everything inside Santana shouts at her to refuse him. Santana promised herself that she would protect Brittany whenever she could—from boxed ears and a hurt heart and from anything else that could harm her—and Santana never intends to break her promise.

Briefly, she considers pretending to be a mute, like Mr. Crusoe's Man Friday when Mr. Crusoe first rescues him, but then she decides against it, knowing that such a pretense could perhaps induce Richard Nelson's gang to do violence to herself and Brittany. What if she were to offer the boys a false name—her father's alias, Lucas—as Brittany's? What if she were to just grab Brittany by the wrist and run for Mr. Pierce's wagon down the street?

Santana hears Richard Nelson's feet fall heavy along the floorboards of the promenade as he approaches behind her.

"Hey, ni—"

"Britt! Baby girl!"

Before Santana can even register her own relief at hearing Daniel Pierce's voice, Brittany moves beside her, taking Santana by the wrist, stirring Santana from her panic.

"That's my daddy," Brittany mumbles, either to herself or to Santana. Then, somewhat louder so that the boys will hear her, "That's my daddy!"

Brittany's magic words break the spell, jolting Santana from her stupor. Santana stares at Brittany with wide eyes, and Brittany gives Santana's wrist a little jig, enticing Santana down from the promenade onto the hot dirt road after her.

Without waiting for anyone else to say another word, Brittany starts to lead Santana away from the boys and toward her father, who stands a ways off, alongside the circus wagon, waving his hat to beckon his daughter back to him.

For their parts, Richard Nelson and his boys appear absolutely flabbergasted at this sudden turn in events, but none of them makes an immediate move to detain Brittany and Santana or to further antagonize the girls as they make their exit, perhaps due to surprise.

When he boys follow the sound of Mr. Pierce's voice with their eyes, the smirks immediately fade from their faces. For as much as Mr. Pierce intimidates Santana, he must intimidate the boys more, for they all shrink where they stand for seeing him—even cocky Richard Nelson. The boys observe his great stature and the wicked Bowie knife hung at his hip, and, in a trice, they appear to make their decision: such a rough-looking stranger is not someone whom they want to cross, if they can avoid it, no matter how beautiful his daughter may be.

Rules are rules are rules, after all, even for ruffians, Santana supposes.

Santana allows Brittany to tug her across the street towards where Mr. Pierce stands waving to them, not far from the wagon. She feels a moment behind the times and almost dizzy for the sudden turn of events. Will it always be Brittany protecting her and not the other way around?

"Come on, darlin'," Brittany whispers in Santana's ear as soon as they're far enough away from the promenade that the boys won't overhear them. "You look green."

"I feel green," Santana mutters.

Brittany just nods, understanding. "Good thing Daddy showed up when he did, huh?" she asks, and Santana can only nod in response, more grateful to Daniel Pierce and his perfect timing than she could possibly express.

Before Santana can stop herself, her fingers slide down to twine with Brittany's fingers, and she holds fast to them, her own heartbeat pounding so strongly through her veins that Brittany can undoubtedly feel it where their skin touches.

(Santana can't explain herself to Brittany in any other way, at the moment.)

Santana can't help but fault herself for shutting down back on the promenade in that same helpless way that she always does whenever something upsets her too much. Just a few days ago, Santana vowed to always protect Brittany, no matter what, and now not only did she fail to do so, but she also actually put Brittany in danger with her foolish, slow tongue. Santana finds no malice at all behind Brittany's eyes when she searches them, but she still hates herself a bit for turning mum during such a white hot moment.

Brittany must intuit it.

Just before they reach Mr. Pierce, Brittany nudges Santana's hip with her hip and gives Santana's hand a little squeeze. "Don't let them bother you, darlin'," she says, thumbing over Santana's palm before releasing it from her grip.

(Whom should Santana not allow to bother her—the hooligan boys on the promenade or the devils that sit on her shoulder, whispering shame into her ears?)

As the girls approach him, Mr. Pierce resituates his hat upon his head, wiping sweat from his brow and neck with the back of his hand as he does so. Perspiration glints amidst his stubble, and his whole face appears ruddy, almost as with fever. If possible, he wears an even tighter squint now than he did when Brittany and Santana parted ways with him a bit more than an hour ago. He wipes the tip of his nose between pinched fingers and swallows what must be day heat at the back of his throat.

"All right," he says thickly, foregoing a greeting. "Let's get over to the store to pick up that order for Mr. Adams." He mutters something else beyond that, but Santana doesn't catch it.

(Santana thinks she hears him say the words _go home_ tucked in amongst others.)

(A bright, quick feeling fills her chest.)

(Home is a person Santana remembers and remembers and remembers.)

* * *

><p>Mr. Adams' "order" amounts to five barrels of beer and four of cider, all brought up from a cool trapdoor cellar located beneath the side street foundations of the general store.<p>

The stout shopkeeper and his wife seem none too pleased to see Brittany and Santana back on their property again, but they refrain from showing any overt discourtesy to the girls in Mr. Pierce's presence. A shop boy—their son, Santana guesses, based upon his likeness to them—helps roll the barrels up from the cellar alongside the shopkeeper, hefting them to Mr. Pierce at street level with considerable effort.

After a while, the shopkeeper's wife disappears back inside the store, presumably to tend other customers, or maybe just to spare herself the unpleasantness of having to look at uncivilized circus folk for a second longer than she has to. As she goes, she leaves her husband with a curt reminder to make sure he tallies the ledger and "takes in a full payment," as if Mr. Pierce—as Mr. Adams' proxy—might somehow shortchange their business otherwise.

While the men work to empty the cellar of its brews, Brittany and Santana crouch in the wagon bed, receiving the barrels as at first Mr. Pierce and then Mr. Pierce with help from the shopkeeper and the shop boy lift the barrels from the ground to the tailgate, grunting under the weight of them and the oppressive heat of the day.

As each barrel touches down on the tailgate, the girls take charge of it together, tipping it over on its side, usually with help from one of the men, on account of the barrel's great heaviness. They must be nimble in their work, lest they crush their fingers beneath the barrel's wooden sides or pinch them in the barrel's belly planks. They also must take great care not to allow the barrel to roll back on the men after the men set it onto the tailgate, as gravity would will it.

Once Brittany and Santana successfully tip the barrel, they roll it toward the front of the wagon bed, as close to the back of the driver's box as they can get it, spinning it under the palms of their hands and guiding it along with their knees.

Thankfully, whatever wainwright built the wagon had the good sense to set the bed on a slight slope, so that the fore of the wagon actually sits slightly lower than the back. The incline helps Brittany and Santana immensely in their work, which they do stooped over like beet-diggers.

Honestly, Santana doesn't think she has ever worked harder for the circus than she has today—and especially not in such extreme heat.

Both Santana and Brittany pant like dogs, unable to cool themselves enough otherwise. Santana would gladly trade this job for embroidering Mrs. Schuester's damnable elephant blankets or for peeling all the root vegetables that Ma Jones could find for her, if only it meant that she could sit down somewhere and not have to wrestle barrels that weigh almost as much as she does on a one-hundred and three degree day.

Never has Santana so hated her heavy gypsy costume. Never has she wished that she could doff her shirt and corset in public like she wants to do right now, decency be damned.

The shopkeeper supplies Mr. Pierce and the girls with enough rope to tether the barrels securely to the wagon bed, so they won't shift too much in transit. Brittany masterminds all the tether knots and Santana adores the way she does so, her pretty pink tongue pinched between her teeth as she finds a hook for this length of rope here, a wood knot for that length of rope there, clever, competent, and sure-handed.

When finally Mr. Pierce asks, "You got 'em down, Brittany?" Brittany can only reply with a nod of her head, her breath already spent.

While Mr. Pierce settles the payment with the shopkeeper, Brittany and Santana flop down upon the barrels, utterly exhausted, their arms and legs draped haphazardly over the bed of barrel bellies, their skirts splayed out like wilted flower petals, withered under the sun. They lean their heads back and take in great gulps of air.

(Santana wonders if Brittany has a headache, too.)

Their eyelids begin to flutter closed, not in sleep, but in sheer fatigue. While the barrels aren't as cool against her back as Santana might have hoped, they certainly aren't as sunbaked as everything else that surrounds Santana, either.

"You circus girls sure work hard," says a young, male voice just a little to the side and below the wagon bed.

When Santana opens her eyes, she finds the shop boy smiling at her and Brittany through the wooden slats, awed. He stands on the street, hanging back while the shopkeeper tallies the ledger and records Mr. Pierce's receipt of sale. Santana doesn't know what to say to the boy or even if she can say anything to him at all.

(Rules and breathlessness, that's it, really.)

Brittany offers the boy a nod. "Thanks," she says simply, to the point as always, before leaning back onto the barrel behind her head and closing her eyes, just breathing and being, trying to stave off the heat. Santana follows suit, closing her eyes and wishing more than anything for Onawa's rain to visit Storm Lake.

A minute later, the wagon shifts as Mr. Pierce pulls himself onto the driver's box. Though Santana might normally flinch in response to such a movement, at present, she can't even force herself to open her eyes to see it for herself. The sun shines through her closed eyelids, choreographing a ballet of orange and yellow rods before Santana's shut eyes. She feels Mr. Pierce's weight settle onto the driver's bench.

"Hold them barrels down," Mr. Pierce's dust-dry voice says from somewhere above and ahead of her.

"Sure thing," Brittany mumbles, though she makes no effort to move.

Santana can imagine that Mr. Pierce nods at his daughter before giving the mule's reins a flick. She hears something slice—knife-quick—through the air and then an animal snuff before the wagon starts to roll. Beer and cider sloshes in the barrels beneath Santana's body, the barrels' wooden sides taking in heat by the minute. Despite the bumpiness of the road leaving Storm Lake, Santana all but slips into a stupor for her tiredness, going.

After a minute, she feels skin on her skin, at first as light as yesterday's forest rain.

Brittany fumbles to find Santana's hand across the wagon bed from her—her eyes presumably closed, too—fingertips ghosting over Santana's knuckles. Once Santana recognizes what Brittany intends to do, she helps Brittany's touch along, groping until she grazes over Brittany's palm and then weaving her fingers between Brittany's fingers, where they ought to be.

She and Brittany clasp hands, and Santana suddenly feels at home and relaxed in a way that she didn't before. Of course, Mr. Pierce remains none the wiser of it.

(Neither Brittany nor Santana speaks a single word.)

(Santana smiles freely, half-hoping that Brittany will open her eyes just long enough to see it.)

* * *

><p>As they draw closer to camp, Santana begins to dread that Mr. Pierce might require her and Brittany's help to unload the barrels from the wagon, just like he required their help to load them.<p>

If he does, Santana worries that she honestly might swoon or contract a brain fever because she already feels a bit lightheaded as it is, and she knows that the rules won't allow her to decline the work, if Mr. Pierce bids her to do it.

Briefly, she considers playing dead when the wagon rolls up to the white city and even allowing the circus supes to bury her if they like for it, as long as it's cooler underground than it is above it, but then she remembers something very important.

Circus supes.

Once she arrives at the realization, Santana begins to laugh, a throaty giggle escaping her lips before she can think to mind it.

"What?" Brittany says, tired and amused somewhere to the side of her. She gives Santana's hand a little squeeze.

"The supes will move the barrels," Santana giggles again.

Brittany shifts where she lies and begins to giggle, too. "You're crazy, darlin'," Brittany says around little golden hiccups of laughter. She sounds slightly addled; Santana probably does, too. "I think you baked your head in the sun and made yourself screwy."

"I think you might be right," Santana chuckles, her ribs shaking against the barrel behind them. Her mouth falls open in a lazy smile, and she plays with her and Brittany's twined hands between them, tugging them a bit closer to herself.

If Mr. Pierce can hear her and Brittany's jibber-jabber conversation behind him, he certainly makes no indication that he can, and, really, Santana wouldn't care if Mr. Pierce could hear it anyway. She laughs again, tickled.

"Not fair," Brittany says at her side, still laughing, too.

"Not fair that I baked my head?" Santana teases. "It's because I have black hair, you know. Black hair traps in the sun. You're lucky your hair's gold."

"Straw-yellow, you mean," Brittany says quickly.

"Nope—gold," Santana avers.

Brittany lets out another short laugh, though it sounds different from her laughter before. "How would you know?" she counters. "You baked your head."

"I can tell the future, Britt," Santana says, lazily, suddenly enjoying herself very much, despite the heat and her exhaustion, feeling somehow beyond herself and wonderfully careless, like she has the only thing that matters in the world at her side. She laughs again.

(Loopy.)

"What does that have to do with what color my hair is right now, darlin'?" Brittany retorts, laughing, too, and sounding more than certain that Santana has baked her head.

"Well, you have to know some things about the past to know the future," Santana explains, as if it's all very plain. "For instance, since I know that in the future, you'll have snow white hair, I must also know that in the past—which would be right now, in case you're counting—you have gold hair, which is very different than straw-yellow hair, thank you quite a lot."

She tries to speak very seriously but has trouble stopping her laughter now that she's started it.

"Will you still like me when I have snow white hair, darlin'?" Brittany asks suddenly, not laughing at all, her voice very sweet and soft, perhaps so Mr. Pierce won't overhear her question from the driver's seat, perhaps due to something else. She sounds like she very much wants to know Santana's answer—and not jokingly at all.

"So much," Santana says truthfully, suddenly not joking at all, either.

A pause.

Then.

"Okay," Brittany says, content.

(It sounds somehow like a promise.)

* * *

><p>The wagon clatters to a halt, and the barrels jostle, shifting against the change in momentum. Santana jostles, too, and groans. Brittany stirs at her side, dropping Santana's hand before clambering to her feet. For the first time since leaving Storm Lake proper, Santana dares to opens her eyes, wincing at the glare.<p>

Brittany hovers just above her, the sun forming an aureole behind her head, her hair casting tendril shadows, long, upon her face. Maybe Santana did die in the back of the wagon. Maybe Brittany is the angel arrived to greet Santana into the heaven her grandmother told her she would never get to see.

(The truth of the matter is that when Santana is with Brittany, she does feel good somehow.)

Santana gasps at Brittany's beauty, worshipful, and suddenly recalls what she had wanted to do when she and Brittany returned to the circus from town—which is to say, to confess her love to Brittany, plainly and honestly, for the first time. Briefly, Santana considers saying the words as soon as she and Brittany can steal away to some private corner in camp, but then Brittany extends two hands to her, interrupting her considerations.

"Hup, hup," Brittany says, locking Santana's fingers with her own and tugging Santana to her feet.

All of a sudden, a wave of wooziness washes over Santana. She stumbles as if drunken or wearing sea legs on the land. White sears behind her eyes, and she nearly keels over for being so lightheaded.

Brittany hurries to catch Santana under the elbows before she falls. "Whoa," she says, supporting Santana's weight. "You all right, darlin'? You didn't really bake your head did you?"

She sounds genuinely concerned, if blunt, as always.

(God, Santana loves her!)

For a second, all Santana's inhibitions leave her, along with her sense of balance. Brittany is just so wonderful, and the sun is just so hot. Their bodies fall flush against each other, and Santana loves the feel of Brittany and everything about Brittany, really.

"Britt," she blurts out. "I have to tell you something—a secret. It's very important."

Brittany rights Santana in her arms. "I'm sure it is, darlin', since you baked your head and all," Brittany says kindly. "We ought to get you a drink of water. It's been too long since we had that sarsaparilla hasn't it?"

Her reaction isn't what Santana would have expected.

Before Santana can process what Brittany just said to her, Mr. Pierce appears at the back of the wagon and unhinges the flap, gesturing to Brittany and Santana to come down from where they stand. Brittany all but passes Santana into the hands of her father, who holds Santana very lightly around the waist as she jumps down from the tailgate using his shoulder as a point of leverage, almost in reverse of how a man might lift his partner as part of a ballroom waltz.

It feels strange to Santana to have a man like Mr. Pierce touch her, even if only briefly and with nothing improper about the contact at all. Santana flinches, holding her breath until her feet meet the grass. Immediately, she scurries away from Mr. Pierce a few steps and turns back to the wagon to wait for Brittany, feeling dizzy again all of sudden and confused in a way that maybe she wouldn't be if she were to have a drink of water, like Brittany says.

Mr. Pierce takes Brittany by the waist and guides her to the earth, too, a shooting star of cobalt blue.

(Santana makes a wish.)

"We're going to go see if Ma Jones needs some help in the kitchen, Daddy," Brittany says brightly—though Santana suspects that what she really means is that they're going to go sneak a drink of water from around the back of the chuck and hope no interrupts them from doing it by putting them to work first.

Mr. Pierce nods but doesn't state a reply. He suddenly seems very far away.

Brittany wraps her pinky finger around Santana's and tugs her away from the wagon bay in the direction of the mess pit. As they go, Santana can't help but feel as if she leaves the careless bravery she felt in the wagon bed behind her.

She still has a secret, of course. She just doesn't know how to tell it.

The white city stands tall now, all its pennants and canvases unfurled and brilliant under the sun, and the further Brittany and Santana progress into it, the more Santana considers that maybe she oughtn't to confess her love to Brittany right now—not when she still feels so lightheaded and can't seem to choose the right words to say for the life of her.

She doesn't want her confession to seem silly or addled. She doesn't want Brittany to think it comes from sun exhaustion or on a foolish whim.

The perfect girl whom Santana loves deserves a perfect love confession.

"You okay, darlin'? You're awful quiet," Brittany says as they come up around the far side of the mess pit, heading in the direction of the chuck wagon.

Santana nods. "Swell," she says dully.

(Will Santana ever not be a coward when it comes to Brittany?)

* * *

><p>The girls arrive on the far side of the mess pit and Brittany rustles them up two tin cups from the back of the chuck wagon without anybody intercepting her at it, as deft in her thievery as one of Mr. Dickens' London pickpockets.<p>

The water the girls draw from Ma Jones' kitchen barrels tastes foul and scalds their throats like hot soup broth, but at least they have a nice time standing in the shade at the back of the chuck wagon, where it probably feels five or ten degrees cooler than it does upon sunlit ground. Neither Brittany nor Santana says much as they sip their pilfered refreshments, in the hopes that if they maintain silence, no one will discover their hiding place behind the wagon.

"Santana Puckerman! Brittany Pierce!"

(No such luck.)

Mrs. Schuester blusters up to them, coming from the direction of her dressing tents toward the mess pit, holding her skirts up around her ankles, already clucking her tongue at Brittany and Santana in disdain before she even reaches their loitering place. She looks perhaps even more frazzled now than she did this morning, with all the rouge washed from her cheeks by perspiration and the tips of the flyaway hair stands escaping her bun curling in the hellish heat. She opens her eyes so widely that Santana wonders if she ever intends to close them again in the future.

"Your father said I might find you here!" Mrs. Schuester snips. "Those elephant blankets won't embroider themselves, you know! There's work to be done before lunchtime! Get a move on! Snap, snap!"

She clicks her fingers at Brittany and Santana, gesturing for them to put their tin cups away back inside the chuck. Brittany quirks an eyebrow at Santana. Santana quirks an eyebrow at Brittany. Sometimes it really does seem that some force in the wider universe would do anything to keep them from their private moments—and, moreover, that Mrs. Schuester works under the employ of that force, its devoted special agent.

"Yes, ma'am," both girls say at once, sighing.

Once Brittany returns the cups to the wagon, she and Santana follow Mrs. Schuester out of the shade, back toward the commercial side of the circus camp, parched, yellow grass matting under the soles of their feet, the cicadas in the brush somehow even more obnoxious than usual for the high temperature.

As they go along, Santana's whole body feels sluggish and heavy, and when they reach the ladies' dressing tent, she finds she can hardly bother herself to listen as Mrs. Schuester loads her and Brittany up with both materials and instructions for decorating the elephant blankets. Mrs. Schuester's voice drones, incessant as the buzz of mosquito wings, and Santana drifts away, not really thinking of anything, tired down past her bones.

"Yes, ma'am," Santana mutters at what must be appropriate intervals, or at least passable ones, given that Mrs. Schuester doesn't shout at her for speaking when she does.

Soon, Santana finds herself following Brittany out of the dressing tent and back into the oppressive sun. She carries two sewing kits herself and Brittany all the blankets, which bunch like the petticoats Santana used to leave strewn over her bedroom floor at the bachelor cottage until her grandmother harped at her to put them in their proper places, _por favor, Santana, mi querida, por el amor de Dios_.

At first, Santana and Brittany seem to amble, not headed to anywhere in particular. Briefly, Santana considers offering up her tent as a place from them to take their work, but then she decides against it, remembering how stuffy her tent can be during the hottest part of the day.

(Honestly, if she and Brittany don't find a place to set down soon, Santana feels liable to faint.)

If it was one-hundred and three degrees in Storm Lake earlier in the day, it must be nearly one-hundred and ten degrees at present, for the sun has nearly reached its apex in the cloudless sky.

Santana's feet clench, sore in her shoes, and the headache she felt brewing in the back of the circus wagon now throbs, fully formed, at her temples and around the orbits of her eyes, as if her skull had fissured like dry earth or stale cake.

"Let's sit down there," Brittany says suddenly, shrugging in the direction a little paintbrush witch-hazel tree poking up at the end of the tent row closest to them. The tree's sparse branches don't afford much shade, but even slim shade seems better than none, at the moment.

"Okay," Santana agrees, following Brittany under the tree's thinly leaved branches.

Immediately, Brittany drops the elephant blankets in a heap upon the ground, collapsing atop them, and Santana follows suit, tossing the sewing kits aside, nearly flopping down atop Brittany. Both girls groan, the ground hard and hot underneath them. Brittany lies on her back, Santana on her front.

"We should take off our shoes," Santana mumbles, her face pressed into the blanket beneath her. She breathes in and smells elephant hide and fetid, processed grass. Further beneath that still, she smells dust and unwashed fabric, old age, and faded heat.

(Is that Africa, she wonders?)

(Someplace she's never been?)

"That's a good idea, darlin'," Brittany says, though neither she nor Santana moves at all from their places.

Instead, their bodies start to settle against the earth, their bones sinking to rest against this divot here and that depression there. Shadows trace lacey patterns over their skin and hair. As long as they lie still, it really does seem cooler beneath the tree than it does beyond it, never mind the slim shade and never mind anything else, either.

Santana's breathing starts to change—to come less from the top of her lungs and more from down around her belly. Her breastbone rows against the earth in a gentle cycle, and her heavy eyelids start to droop.

She listens to Brittany's breath turn slow and deep at her side, the same as hers does, and though she can't see Brittany's face, given their positions, she can imagine it relaxing, the creases in Brittany's brow smoothing out, the great bother of existing in such heat slowly easing as Brittany gives herself over to rest.

* * *

><p>When Santana wakes, she doesn't know for how long she slept—only that Brittany still sleeps at her side and looks like a fairytale princess under a spell doing it.<p>

White light plays through the translucent tips of Brittany's eyelashes and spangles diamonds down her cheek that dance and disappear to the swaying of the branches overhead, moving with them and the sun. The pale pink of sunburn blushes under Brittany's skin. Brittany's hands rest folded just beneath her breasts, and her chest rises and falls on a steady rhythm. She wears a serene expression, her lips slightly opened, pretty, berry-hued, and bowed with that slightest soupçon pout Santana never can seem to kiss away, even for all her trying.

(Brittany's beauty so often bears an almost-sadness to it. It lingers around Brittany's teardrop eyes and at the corners of her dainty mouth.)

Santana leans over Brittany, fascinated at the way Brittany's eyelids flicker with dream-seeing, close enough that she can nearly breathe Brittany's breath. The squeezing feeling in Santana's chest turns tighter than ever before. Her mouth falls open.

"I love you."

It doesn't count, of course—not with Brittany asleep, not right now—but Santana says it all the same, barely at a whisper, more breath behind her words than voice. Immediately, she stiffens and wonders if Brittany won't wake.

(She doesn't.)

After a second, Santana whispers again, this time more deliberately than before.

"I love you, BrittBritt, so much."

She presses a kiss to Brittany's forehead, and Brittany sighs in her sleep but doesn't stir. Slowly, Santana peels back from where she leans over Brittany and sits up straight, pressing a hand to where her own heart should beat in her chest, curious as to whether she'll still find it there or not.

(Or did she just give it away to Brittany?)

She breathes butterfly breaths and blinks in the sun. Will she ever feel brave enough to tell Brittany her secret when Brittany is wide awake, too? She glances down at Brittany's sleeping body, S-curved over the grass, knees bent at an angle and hips turned on their side. Her gaze settles upon Brittany's mother's boots.

Santana bites her lips into her mouth.

Without thinking about it, she reaches for Brittany's legs and drapes them over her lap. As quietly and gently as she can, she begins to unbutton Brittany's boots, starting with the right and moving to the left. With great care, she peels the threadbare leather away from Brittany's sockless skin, first from Brittany's ankles, then down to Brittany's toes, removing each shoe and setting it aside, deep in the shade, so that the shoes will feel cool if Brittany decides to wear them again when she finally wakes.

Though Brittany twitches slightly while Santana works, she remains rapt in dreaming, sleeping so deeply that she doesn't notice Santana whispering love to her under a witch-hazel tree and removing the boots from her feet. She lets out a little whimper as Santana rearranges her legs, laying them out more comfortably upon the grass.

(Santana feels a sweet pang play through her chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

While having two sets of hands at their work would certainly make it go faster, Santana finds that she can't bear to wake Brittany, and so begins embroidering the elephant blankets herself, opening up a sewing kit and a small jar of green and yellow beads and drawing the one blanket that isn't somehow buried under Brittany up into her lap, arranging it over her skirt so that she can trace out its patterns.

It doesn't take long for Santana to fall into her usual trance doing needlework, her thoughts interweaving with the beads upon the fabric, disappearing in one hole, reappearing, quarter-stitched, through another.

"I just had the best dream about you."

Brittany's voice jolts Santana from her daze, and Santana's needle slips, pricking her finger.

(Like Perrault's Briar Rose at her spindle.)

Honestly, the needle prick surprises Santana more than it hurts her, but still she gasps and flinches, dropping the needle as though it had bitten her, shaking her hand against the air. A bead of blood forms bright upon her fingertip.

"Santana!" Brittany squeaks, covering her mouth with both hands, her eyebrows raised so high on her forehead that they almost disappear into her hair. She immediately leans forward, reaching for Santana's hurt hand, and pulls it to herself, examining the wound.

(She acts as if Santana really might die under some evil fairy's curse.)

"I am so sorry, darlin'," she says, her voice close to breaking. "I didn't mean to scare you."

If Santana didn't know better, she might think that Brittany were about to cry.

_(When you look so sad, it breaks my heart, you know.)_

(The girl who's taken knife blows cares far too much about Santana's little needle stick.)

"BrittBritt," Santana pouts, heart all but melting in her chest—and from nothing to do with the heat of the day. "BrittBritt, it's fine. I'm okay," she promises, so sweet on Brittany that she almost can't abide it.

"Are you sure?" Brittany asks in a very small way, returning Santana's pout, still cradling Santana's hand in her own.

Of course, Santana is sure. All the same, a blush rises to her cheeks, and she glances between Brittany's eyes and the ground, finding her dropped needle twined amidst the grass. "Well, you could kiss it better, if you liked," she says in her tiniest Brittany-voice.

Brittany's whole face lights. "If it will make you feel better, darlin'," she says seriously.

With exceeding gentleness, Brittany curls Santana's fingers toward Santana's palm and lifts Santana's hand to her face, pressing her warm, sorry mouth first to the knuckles on Santana's hurt finger and then to the thread ring, still tied with a bow and an unspoken promise, further down Santana's hand. Her eyes turn fervent, deep, and so impossibly blue. She allows her kiss to linger for several seconds before pulling away.

Santana's heartbeat speeds, and the stoked feeling ignites in her belly.

"Better?" Brittany says, pouting out her lips.

"Mhm," Santana nods.

"Are you sure?" Brittany presses.

Santana laughs, taking her hand back to herself, wiping the droplet of blood away on the grass at her side. Santana doesn't think she's ever seen Brittany quite so concerned about anything. Really, Santana couldn't feel better, though.

(She's had the best medicine in the world for her wound.)

"Tell me about your dream, silly goose," Santana says warmly, not wanting Brittany to fret about her anymore—and especially not over something as harmless as a poked finger that stopped bleeding almost before it started to do it.

Santana reaches for her discarded needle with her injured hand and taps Brittany's kneecap with her uninjured one. When Brittany doesn't speak right away, Santana fixes her with a look.

"What?" Santana says, suddenly nervous, though she can't exactly explain why.

Brittany smiles a bashful smile and shrugs. "I—," she starts, glancing up at the tree branches overhead, like they might provide the words for which she searches. A pause, then, "I don't remember, darlin'," she says quickly. Color floods her cheeks and rouges her ears. She looks down from the tree branches but away from Santana.

There's that funny twinge in her voice again.

The mess bell rings.

(Of course, it does.)

* * *

><p>Brittany wears the queerest smile all the way back to the dressing tents and keeps stealing glances at Santana, guiltily, in the same manner a child might steal sweets from a Christmas spread while her mother works, back turned to the table, always trying for just one more success before someone catches her thieving. Whenever Brittany's eyes meet Santana's, Brittany bites her lips into her mouth between her teeth. She almost skips, rather than walks.<p>

Santana laughs. "Did Ma Jones give those water barrels a few extra stirs this afternoon, too?" she teases, amused at Brittany's energy.

Brittany grins at her and bounds a few steps ahead, the elephant blankets and her shoes almost slipping from her arms.

"I'm just really happy," she says simply.

(Santana resists the temptation to ask Brittany if there isn't any particular reason for her happiness, though she yearns to know Brittany's answer to the question.)

Luckily, Mrs. Schuester has already vacated the ladies' dressing tent by the time Brittany and Santana arrive there, so she can't yell at them for doing so little work under the witch-hazel tree.

Without quite knowing what else to do in Mrs. Schuester's absence, the girls deposit the elephant blankets and sewing supplies amidst so many new costumes for the upcoming extravaganza. Afterwards, they hurry back toward the mess pit for lunch, stopping only briefly by Brittany's tent so that Brittany can put her shoes away, before running all the way to their destination, despite the soaring temperature, so as not to get any search parties out looking for them, should they take too long to report for lunch after the bell.

Whereas in the morning, the mess pit seemed charged with a silent and nervous kind of energy, now it buzzes with chatty excitement, the whole company in a kafuffle over some anticipated happening, the specific nature of which Santana can't seem to ascertain, though she opens her ears to the gossip.

Wisps of conversation—some of it about the extreme temperature in Storm Lake, some of it about the full moon, some of it about the minutiae of camp life—float over the mess pit, like so many catkins from cottonwood trees, buoyant in the air, but no one topic of discussion seems more likely a cause for the camp's commotion than any other, as far as Santana can surmise.

While most of the company members ultimately seem fidgety, Ma Jones seems something between frantic and galvanized as she marshals her kitchen girls and anyone else she deems competent enough to take orders even more quickly, snappily, and desperately than usual, sending this pot here and that plate there, declaring a certain dish "cold as the Klondike" at the center, and then another one "so bland it ain't fit for underside of a dead dog's tongue." If Santana didn't know better, she would swear she could see a flush forming at Ma Jones' cheeks.

(A wooden spoon has never waved with so much gusto.)

Of course, Brittany and Santana know better than to step underfoot of Ma with her in such dizzy state, and so they slip in amongst a group of sweaty supes in the chow line to avoid her, keeping their heads low as they spoon food onto their plates.

For all Ma's nitpicking, lunch today does indeed turn out even more sumptuous than usual. While Ma might typically serve a single entree and one or two sides with it, today she's filled the whole table with all sorts of slow-roasted vegetables and gravy meats, plus more biscuits than Sam could shove into his pockets over the course of a whole week.

Unfortunately, Santana finds that she herself doesn't feel especially hungry, given the heat, despite the fact that she and Brittany have already put in some hard labor for the day. No matter how fine it smells, steaming hot food seems unappealing when the air around it may as well be its own oven.

Ultimately, Santana settles for taking just a helping of hominy and some biscuits and Brittany does the same.

With the benches in the mess pit already claimed, for the most part, the girls take a seat on the grass, balancing their plates in the laps of their skirts. It isn't until they sit down that Santana even thinks to look for Noah Puckerman around the kitchen; she finds him sitting with his back to her, already halfway through his meal by the looks of it.

"Do you think he's still sore at us?" Brittany asks, tracing Santana's gaze.

"I think," Santana says slowly, "that right now he's probably just pleased to have so much food on his plate. And I don't think he really minds about me as much as he makes it out that he does. He just likes having someone to follow him around, is all. It doesn't especially matter if it's me or someone else."

Brittany nods. "We should put Rory on that," she says thoughtfully.

Santana quirks an eyebrow, unfamiliar with the name. "Rory?"

Brittany points her fork in the direction of the round-faced young clown who shares his tent with Blaine the trilby tramp—Santana's next door neighbor—and shrugs. "He hero-worships all the older boys," she explains, smirking.

"Poor kid," Santana says, only mostly joking.

Brittany takes a bite of homily and swallows it. "We should get him to live in your tent with Puck, so that they can get used to each other. It would be like when Mr. Adams first bought Bathsheba and the elephant trainers had to keep her in a separate pen next to Methuselah and Deborah's pen so that Methuselah and Bathsheba could get used to the smell of her before they moved them all in together, so that they could be a family," she says smoothly.

"Oh?" Santana says quirking an eyebrow. "Well, if Rory moved in with Puck, where would I go, BrittBritt? My tent only has room for two."

Brittany smiles her cat smile and opens her mouth to answer something sly, by the looks of her, but she doesn't get the chance to speak before something changes in the atmosphere of the mess.

The excited chatter turns momentarily louder and then dies off in an instant.

When Santana looks around for whatever silenced the company so quickly, she finds the answer striding into the kitchen from around the back of the chuck.

Misters Adams and Fabray march into the dining area, their families just behind them, Mrs. Fabray holding a pretty lace parasol to shade herself from the sun, Arthur in his rolling chair, a manservant at his back, pushing him along, and, last of all, Quinn Fabray, clothed in the prettiest Kelly green dress and gold neckerchief that Santana has ever seen.

They look like the cover illustration on a Harper's Monthly magazine, so handsome that they can hardly be real.

Amongst everyone in the company, only Ken, the Schuesters, and Ma Jones don't seem one whit surprised to see the two families in the mess area, which is perhaps why Ma Jones seemed so frantic before, Santana realizes.

(Because she knew what would come.)

Before the company can start back up with its inevitable chatter, Mr. Adams draws to a halt, just beside the chuck, Mr. Fabray at his side, and their families lined up behind them. Mr. Adams wears his widest jocund grin, his eyes all but hidden behind his upturned cheeks. He claps Mr. Fabray loudly on the back and leans in to say something in his ear. When Mr. Fabray nods consent to whatever Mr. Adams just suggested to him, Mr. Adams faces the company and clears his throat.

"They say," he begins, his voice booming out over the assembly, no one daring to speak while he does, or even to move their spoons against their plates, lest the metal squeak, "that when a man has good news, the best thing he can do for himself is to share it with his friends. Well, friends, today Mr. Russell Fabray and I come to share with you the happy tidings that our two families will be soon be united through the sacred bonds of matrimony! Much to our great delight and ceaseless satisfaction, my son, Arthur, has proposed marriage to Mr. Fabray's most accomplished and delicate daughter, Lucy, and she has accepted Arthur's proposal for them to wed! Because young love is impatient and neither Mr. Fabray nor I are men who believe in wasting time, the nuptials shall take place next Saturday evening, in the most delightful town of Kenyon, Minnesota, where Mr. Fabray's boyhood friend, a minister of some repute, will marry Arthur and Lucy in the sight of our Lord. Of course, you are all invited to attend!"

Immediately, the company begins to applaud most enthusiastically. However, almost just as immediately, Mr. Fabray signals for everyone to quiet down again. Since rules are rules, the company complies.

"Now, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, Jonah!" Mr. Fabray says in his blustery way, clapping Mr. Adams on the back. "Go on and tell these good folks what you've gone and done for them!" When he smiles, his eyes droop, like those of a dog with hanging jowls. He looks proud, like he's posing for someone to make a statue of him, even though he praises Mr. Adams' virtue and not his own.

Mr. Adams laughs, lionish. "Oh, of course!" he says. "I almost forgot: In celebration of our children's engagement, I took the liberty of purchasing some spirits for all you good people about the camp. Ma Jones assures me that they'll help to wash down your supper most splendidly, and, of course, I wouldn't be the man to doubt her"—beside the hearth, Ma Jones smiles in a way that Santana would almost call shy, if Santana didn't know better—"I've beer and cider for everyone!"

At Mr. Adams' word, Santana notices several things all at once.

First, Santana observes that though Puck, his friends, and many of the younger company members clap and hoot most raucously in response to Mr. Adams' announcement, some other company members, and especially some of the older performers, grumble in displeasure at it.

("He can't fill our paychecks but he can spend his money on vile drinks for the whole crew, can he?" someone complains within earshot of Santana.)

("Woohoo! We'll make ourselves merry tonight!" someone else crows right beside the complainer, exuberant.)

Second, Santana can't help but see that while both Mr. Adams and Mr. and Mrs. Fabray couldn't be more pleased at their own news, neither one of the two young "lovebirds" seems to find it particularly agreeable.

Arthur looks like some very thoughtful person just gave him a gift that he couldn't want less, though he's far too polite to say as much. He pinches his lips together, and his hands fidget over the flannel blanket over his lap. He glances at his father, at Quinn, at the circus company, and at the ground, seeing everything, but unseen himself. He seems impossibly small in his chair and also impossibly young.

Quinn fares even worse.

From the first time Santana set eyes on Quinn, she thought that Quinn looked like a tragedy, and now she sees—it's true.

While Misters Adams and Fabray, Mrs. Fabray, and even Arthur all look toward the company, taking in their reaction to the news, Quinn faces away from the crowd so that she stands in profile before the broad, yellow side of the chuck wagon, her mouth open as though she would either shout without saying anything or laugh without feeling happy. She appears, in a way, wounded, as if something had stabbed clean through her—some ghost dagger, thrown by an invisible hand, lodged deep into her belly flesh, right below where she would breathe.

Though Quinn stands quite a distance away from Santana—at least ten yards, if not more—Santana perceives an unmistakable tightness at the hinge of Quinn's jaw and in the round bones about Quinn's eyes and finally, at last, over the bridge of her nose and at her temples, as plainly as if Santana lingered right at Quinn's shoulder. It is an expression Santana knows on her own face by sensation and by heartbreak, though she has only known it for such a short time.

Quinn's trying most desperately not to cry.

(Because she knows that if does cry, she might never stop.)

(And she has no Brittany to find her.)

Quinn's eyes start to shine, and she closes her mouth, swallowing hard, closing her eyes and turning her head even further away from the crowd and her family, less, Santana thinks, so that no one will see her, and more so that she won't have anything to see.

Santana squeezes Brittany's hand tight in her own.

(She hadn't realized she'd gotten hold of it.)

Of course, Santana knew that Misters Adams and Fabray were planning an engagement between their two children, and Quinn knew it, too, maybe even before she eavesdropped on that conversation at the tents in Cherokee. All the same, there is something about hearing a thing you dread to hear spoken aloud for the first time that makes the thing so much more awful than if it remained unspoken or at least private.

In the crowd, more folks start to complain about Mr. Adams spending money on something as frivolous as beer. Many people get up from the tables, not waiting around for any sort of dismissal, clearing their places and heading back toward the white city. The Adams and Fabray families retreat from the mess, Quinn following along last of all.

("There's a bad moon tonight," someone says.)

(And just when Santana had thought that she had almost come to know the circus, something about it feels changed and changed and changed.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: I dedicate this chapter to my dear friend Kelly at littleoases because she is now twenty-four years old of age. Holla! As always, I couldn't have gotten through this chapter without the guidance of my awesomesauce beta Han at socallmedaisy, who is basically the world's biggest rock star, just so y'all know.<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**(Cuidado con el mal de ojo, Santana.) : (Beware the evil eye, Santana.)**_

_**"Pobrecita, Brittany" : "Poor little thing, Brittany"**_

_**... por favor, Santana, mi querida, por el amor de Dios : please, Santana, my sweetheart, for the love of God.**_


	11. Full Moon on a Sunday Night Part II

**Chapter 9 (continued): Full Moon on a Sunday Night, Part II**

**Sunday, July 3rd, 1898: Storm Lake, Iowa**

When the warning bell rings for the morning fair, Brittany and Santana take their time saying goodbye to each other, lingering at the corner of the first tent beyond the mess pit, swinging their clasped hands between them, unseen by the rest of the circus though they stand in plain sight.

To the outside observer, Brittany and Santana's mood might appear merry, but Santana can feel a special kind of aching sweetness between them, like they can't quite hold fast enough to each other or long enough, and, secretly, she knows it has something to do with what she and Brittany watched happen to Quinn Fabray back at the mess pit.

Every now and again, Brittany dips her face close to Santana's, but then she inevitably pulls back and hovers, waiting, suspended like a bee above a flower petal, almost but just not exactly there, her breath impossibly shallow and light.

Her gaze darts back and forth between Santana's eyes, like she can't settle upon how to see Santana best, and her flightiness somehow reminds Santana of the way that sunlight will catch upon moving water, glinting over the edges of it, brilliant and fleeting but with nowhere to take hold.

Neither girl has the words to explain quite what she feels, so Santana says instead, "I should really go put my shoes away before the fair, BrittBritt," mapping out the palms of Brittany's hands with her thumbs, biting her own lips into her mouth, not really wanting to step away from Brittany at all, even for a minute.

Brittany tugs Santana in the direction of her own tent. "You should just put your shoes in my trunk," she suggests, the ghost of a smile on her face.

"I should?" Santana quirks an eyebrow. "But then what would I do the next time I needed them?"

"You would have to come see me to get them, I guess," Brittany says, and though she should sound sly, she doesn't—she just sounds thoughtful or wishful, even. Artless. After a second, she draws a breath, steeling herself, and adds, "Or you could just stay with me all the time... and then you wouldn't have to leave your shoes behind."

(There's a twinge in her words, just on the brink of something—)

"Yeah?"

Normally, Santana might hate the height and eagerness to her own voice in a moment such as this one, but today she finds that she doesn't much mind it at all. She's only barely keeping a secret from Brittany anyway, and Brittany's not doing a much better job of keeping a secret of her own. For the first time since Mr. Adams made his announcement, both girls grin at each other, though they know that Brittany's suggestion is an impossible one and silly, at that.

Brittany leans in toward Santana again, wonderfully and terribly close, and Santana's eyelids flutter shut, as delicate as moth's wings, in response. Santana waits, breathless, and tilts her face, without thinking, towards Brittany's lips. The stoked feeling flares low in Santana's belly. Brittany thumbs over Santana's palms.

"You'd better go put your shoes away, darlin'," Brittany says carefully, pressing her forehead up against Santana's but withholding her kiss. "And I'd better go change into my costume for the matinee."

Though Santana wants to feel cross with Brittany for teasing her, she can't. Her mouth lifts into a smile, and she opens her eyes to see Brittany staring at her, wily, though only for a half-second before Brittany peels back.

(It seems such a pity that they should ever have to part from each other, and especially in such a world where a girl can have the thing she wants most—in secret—torn away from her at an instant.)

"I just want to stay here with you," Santana admits, still holding onto Brittany by the wrists, leaning into her. Her voice sounds scratchy and full of longing to her own ears; she can only imagine what it sounds like to Brittany.

"I know," Brittany says, giving her hand a little squeeze, just a hint of circus loneliness lacing her pretty primrose lips and visible behind her eyes.

It's such a simple thing to say, but somehow it feels like so, so much.

(Early in the morning, on the wagon ride into camp, Brittany almost said—)

(And Santana almost said it, too.)

They both take steps away from each other, still holding hands between them. Brittany's thumb brushes over Santana's palm, soft.

"I'll find you during the knight sketch," Brittany says.

"I'll give you my favor today," Santana blurts out, before she can stop herself.

Brittany wears a soft, queer smile. "I'd like that," she says. She gives Santana's palm another stroke before finally letting go from it. Then, "I'll see you soon." She disappears around the bend in the way she always does—like the last quaver of a note fading from the air after a symphony.

Santana watches after Brittany until she can no longer see Brittany's shadow on the grass or upon the sides of the tents in the distance, and every little trace of Brittany goes away.

"I love you," Santana whispers, a second later than she might have liked to do it.

(In such a world where a girl can have the thing she wants most—in secret—torn away from her in an instant, Santana vows to keep close to Brittany forever and ever, no matter what.)

(Santana gave herself away to someone once without thinking; when she gives herself to Brittany, she thinks of nothing else.)

* * *

><p>After tucking her shoes away and gathering up her tambourine for the matinee back at her tent, Santana jogs to the midway, a minute behind the warning bell, slipping into her gazebo just as the first patrons step onto the circus grounds.<p>

By the time Santana takes her seat, Ken already stands at his post beside her gazebo, scowling like an ugly old bulldog against the sun and at her. The sign announcing her act still bears his late-made editions from last week: "MADAME ROSSETTI, GYPSY FORTUNETELLER: Reader of Both Palms," a wooden board blocking out certain dangerous words underneath the byline, keeping them a secret from any patrons who might try Santana's hand otherwise.

For the most part, the crowds at the fair today seem far sparser than it usually might, likely on account of the heat. Only about a dozen persons gather in queue at Santana's gazebo altogether, and, among them, only about three customers actually want Santana to read their palms.

Santana rejoices in having less attention on her than usual during the fair, and especially because she knows that today she won't have to deal Death to anyone.

Maybe because of the temperature, maybe because of Brittany, maybe because she knows that she won't have to spread her tarot deck at all, Santana starts off her readings somewhat giddy and speaks more bravely than she has all day, promising futures she has no authority to give and wearing a cat smile as she leans across her table.

"You'll meet a woman," she says to a young man, tracing out a crease at random upon his palm with her pointer finger as if following a long road upon a map, like Marco Polo all the way to the Orient. "A beautiful woman. And she will change your fate."

"Change it how?" the young man says, glancing from the grass to his own palm to Santana's face.

"Ah," Santana pauses. "She will, um, how do you say it? She will lead you down new paths?"

Her smile shines, surprisingly genuine. The few patrons surrounding her table all mutter, intrigued that Santana would predict such a bold and even salacious thing, and she feels a flare of self-consciousness but also a secret thrill.

She'll never know if her prophecy will hold true for the man or not, after all.

But then.

Mr. Adams doesn't mean to talk over Santana's reading, but with such a lion's roar as his, his voice carries even when he speaks softly. Santana cannot see Mr. Adams from where she sits, but she can hear him, standing somewhere behind her patrons, just beyond her gazebo, talking in a furious whisper.

"—the other half of the damn sign, Ken! I can't have a fortuneteller who only reads palms—even if she does read both of them! For Christ's sake, Ken!"

"Someone stole her cards from her!"

"When?"

"In Correctionville, or thereabouts—"

"And I haven't heard of the theft until now?"

"The thief made off before anyone could catch him—"

"Hang the thief, Ken! He was probably only a schoolboy on a dare! My fortuneteller needs cards to carry her act, but I can't order her new cards if I don't know the old ones have gone missing, confound you!"

"Yes, sir. Pardon, sir."

"Bring that magician's apparel catalogue to my tent after the show, Ken. I'll have to send by pony for a fresh deck and put it on rush order."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

Santana's fingernail stills over her patron's palm, as does her breath behind her lips. Somehow, she hadn't realized that Mr. Adams could buy her new cards to replace the ones she had hidden. An uneasy feeling settles in the pit of her stomach, a rock sunk to the bottom of a lake.

"Madame?" says her patron, suddenly wary of her expression.

How long before the new cards arrive for her at the circus?

_No se puede eludir la Muerte, Santana. Viene para todos._

* * *

><p>No matter how much Santana dislikes the idea that Mr. Adams will order new cards to replace the ones hidden away in her valise, she can't help but quickly forget about tarot cards altogether once she reaches the backstage area, where one of Mrs. Schuester's girls sets a sprig of pink trefoil in her hand, and another one of Mrs. Schuester's girls costumes her with a red kerchief veil.<p>

Santana promised her favor to Brittany today, and she feels aflutter with anticipation, thinking on how she might get that favor into Brittany's possession and also about just Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

"Go line up," Mrs. Schuester snips at Santana, eyeing Santana's smile with equal parts distaste and wariness, like she thinks that no good will come from Santana feeling happy.

Santana does as Mrs. Schuester instructs, finding a place amongst the other veiled girls queued up to enter the big top. Though on another day Santana might sue for the company of her fellow gypsy, today Santana doesn't bother to search for Rachel at all, for she knows that Rachel won't want to see her after the incident on this morning's train. She also doesn't sue for Rachel because there is only has one person whom she longs to see in all the world, and Rachel isn't her.

Going into the big top, Santana closes her eyes, opening them again only after she emerges under the stage lights. She finds Brittany wearing a veil of powdered blue and facing directly away from her. Despite the goings on in the ring and the roar of the crowd, Brittany keeps her eyes trained to her own slippered toes, which she points as gracefully as might a ballerina, playing like she walks along a raised beam though in actuality she stands firmly upon the ground. Her arms spread out on either side of her like wings to help her keep her balance. She holds a belled blue flower of a type that Santana doesn't recognize and pays no attention to anything outside her game, focusing instead on each step she takes forward.

(Immediately, Santana thinks that Brittany looks like an angel.)

Brittany is quiet and perfect and when Santana sees her, Santana takes in the full aspect of Brittany's body, remembering it from yesterday, naked, pink, and open. The stoked sensation flares in Santana's belly. She feels fond and heated all at once, and she instantly wonders if she will ever find enough ways in which to adore Brittany Pierce.

The band has already begun to play lively music for the sketch, but rather than joining in with the cavorting of the other girls, Santana walks quickly and silently over to Brittany, coming up just behind her.

For a split instant, Santana holds her breath, but then she wraps her arms around the slimmest part of Brittany's waist and sets her chin down on Brittany's shoulder, leaning into her with a sigh, standing just a bit on tiptoe to do it.

Santana feels Brittany flinch at the touch, Santana's heat against her heat catching her by surprise. Brittany gasps as Santana's lips brush over the sinews in her neck, not precisely in a kiss but in a closeness.

Despite the fact that the girls stand at center stage, they're invisible to the crowd; no one watches them in particular amidst so much other motion and color, though they occupy the very heart of all the pinwheel circus brilliance.

"Hey, you," Santana says beside Brittany's ear, so that Brittany can hear her over the roar. She gives Brittany's waist a little squeeze, locking her fingers together directly above Brittany's navel, and breathes in Brittany's scent, brighter than usual under the sweltering big top lights.

"You surprised me," Brittany says, not at all displeased. She relaxes to Santana's touch.

"Well, that makes one time when I surprised you and one-hundred-thousand times when you surprised me," Santana says, only mostly joking. She shrugs, her body shifting against Brittany's back, and stands up taller on her tiptoes, so that she can hold Brittany faster.

(Brittany feels so good.)

Brittany laughs and leans back against Santana, allowing Santana to become her balance. "You've surprised me more than once," she assures her. Then, "Do you think we ought to dance for the sketch?"

"Yes," Santana says, loosening her hold on Brittany's waist. When she spins Brittany to face her, their eyes meet, and they grin, oblivious to the action going on around them, holding to each other by the hands. Santana's heart flutters. "Will you accept this favor, milady?" she asks, bowing slightly and extending the trefoil to Brittany with a flourish.

Even though Santana promised Brittany the favor beforehand, Brittany flushes all the same, mouth falling open in shock and delight. She presses a hand to her heart. "Of course," she says, recovering enough to curtsy to Santana, fanning out her pretty white show-skirts like bleached flower petals, stooping at one knee.

Santana grins, filled with warmth that has nothing to do with big top heat. If she doesn't mind herself, she'll kiss Brittany in the next moment in front of a full audience.

"Here," she says, stepping forward and tucking the trefoil under the sash at Brittany's waist, hiding it away like a bookmark between pages. "Now you have to defend my honor," she smirks.

"Okay," Brittany says, wearing a smile that's both faraway and very close all at once. Then, "Thank you." Her hand stills over Santana's for a second, playing over the thread ring at Santana's finger, and Santana shivers all the way to her quick.

_I love you_, she thinks under the music and the lights and the tumult of the crowd.

(_You love me back_, she thinks again as Brittany leads her into dancing.)

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana scarcely take two steps into their dance before the knights commence to war, the villains clad in black charging forward to frighten the maidens with a single, deep-voiced shout. Santana shrieks, Brittany doesn't, and both girls scurry away from the boys, linked at the pinky fingers, Brittany keeping just behind Santana, setting a barrier between her and the knights.<p>

When the blue knights rally to fight back the black, the circus crowd roars, and Santana latches onto Brittany's arm, holding it fast, so silly with happiness that she can't help but giggle and smile and sway where she stands. As before, Brittany remains between Santana and the fracas, grinning herself, though she also wears a stalwart sort of look in her eyes.

(Maybe most girls couldn't be dashing, but Brittany Pierce is dashing, and beautiful, too.)

When Santana shoots Brittany a questioning look, Brittany gestures to the trefoil tucked at her sash, strikes a heroic pose, and wags her eyebrows at Santana, silly for a brief instant before turning serious again all at once.

Santana's heart squeezes in her chest.

(Why would she ever need a gallant knight when she can have a gallant Brittany instead?)

In their turn, the blue knights push back the black, until the black knights offer up surrender, yielding to their knees. The audience cheers, and Santana clutches at Brittany's elbow, dizzied with how much the crowd seems to like the sketch and also from adoring Brittany so much.

When the knights all line up, both black and blue, to receive their favors from the ladies, Santana frets for a half a second about what might happen if someone notices that she gave her flower to Brittany rather than to one of the boys, but she scarcely has time to register her concern before suddenly the knights all shout and raise their wooden weapons again, running forward toward the women as a one.

This isn't a usual part of the sketch.

Santana starts with surprise, and Brittany steps in front of her, but then the boys run straight to them, and, all at once, Santana feels the strong press of a body around her, hard and heavy. She smells spice and heat and sour.

Puck.

Puck's arms seal over her arms and around her waist, and Santana yelps as her feet lift from the ground. Her stomach flops, and, in a dizzy instant, Santana spins, Puck flipping her up and over one of his broad shoulders, holding her as if she were a sack of grain that he meant to carry from the wagon bay to the mess pit upon his back.

Santana's face hangs down toward the ground, and her hips hinge over Puck's collarbone. Her hair spills in her face, catching at her wet lips, a cascade of silken dark. Through the splay of black and color in motion, she sees that Brittany has suffered her same fate; Sam carries Brittany slung over his back, as well, like so many of the well-mannered American girls spirited away by Indians in Mr. Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking tales.

All around them, more girls let up shrieks and laughs as the knights "kidnap" them to the back of the ring. Santana feels a swoop in her stomach and grabs a handful of Puck's shift so that she won't fall.

"I've got you, ladybird," Puck promises, devil smirk in his voice though Santana can't see his face.

"Brittany, help!" Santana calls, laughing though it almost hurts to do so with her belly pressed up against Puck's shoulder and bones.

Puck half-walks and half-jogs toward the back of the big top, and though Santana can see nothing but her own hair and the flashes of light that filter through it, she can hear the audience whooping and applauding with more enthusiasm than might another group double or even triple its size. Blood rushes to Santana's head and ears, and she counts her pulse, loud, in her temples and at the sides of her neck. Her fingers slip against Puck's shift.

For a second, she feels afraid.

"I got you, ladybird," Puck promises, but it isn't until Brittany reaches out to grab Santana's free hand—Brittany still slung over Sam's back, Santana still slung over Puck's—that Santana actually feels safe.

The knights and the ladies exit the big top through its back flaps to the thunder of one-thousand hands clapping in delight. Santana's hand slips from Brittany's, and she whimpers in complaint.

Once Puck passes from the indoors to the outside, white afternoon light floods Santana's eyes, even from behind her hair. Slowly, Puck lets her down to the ground, and Sam does the same for Brittany. Immediately, Santana's head whirls with dizziness for having hung upside-down for so long.

Though Santana does still feel giddy from the recent rush and also for the most part droll about it, something in her doesn't like that Puck—or any boy, really—could just scoop her up and carry her away, though she would resist him doing it. She can still feel the ghost pressure of Puck's shoulder bone against her belly, and it wears into her like a bruise. Puck didn't hurt her, of course, and he made his move all in good fun, but, all the same, Santana knows she won't altogether forgive him for his stunt today or even tomorrow or perhaps ever, really.

(In such a world where a girl can have the thing she wants most—in secret—torn away from her in an instant, Santana vows to keep close to Brittany forever and ever, no matter what.)

For the second time in very few minutes, arms wrap over Santana's arms. Then, a hand strokes the hair from Santana's face, tucking it gently behind Santana's ear so that Santana can see again. Santana blinks against the light and discovers herself looking into the purest, softest blue.

Brittany.

Immediately, Santana warms to Brittany's touch, following it like a morning glory will the sun in its daily path across the sky. Brittany holds Santana, rapt in an embrace, for a long while before letting her go again.

"You all right, darlin'?" Brittany asks, herself rosy-cheeked, breathless, and wobbly on her feet.

Santana nods, "Sure thing."

(She knows that Brittany won't ever let her fall.)

* * *

><p>The rest of the matinee passes in a rush for Santana, a whirl of rainbow colors, lively music, and fleeting glances of Brittany, resplendent, under the stage lights. Santana's heartstrings coil, tight, like thread about a spool—straw spun into gold thread—or red thread, maybe, around her finger—as she stands at her usual aperture, watching men and beasts and her true love, feeling ever closer to some inexplicable something that evades all words and even conscious thought.<p>

She dances with Puck and Rachel during the gypsy act, relearning how much she adores the good graces of a friendly crowd, and then waits with a heartbeat that skips like a stone over water to see if Brittany will make it safely though the knife throwing act.

(She does.)

When at last the final processional draws to its end and the circus company empties from the big top all in a flood—like grain spilled from a torn sack—Santana feels somehow like she can't catch her breath under the brightness of the sun.

She allows Puck to lead her away from the big top, though she checks behind and in front of herself, as always, for Brittany. Puck prattles on about how he expects that, smallish turnout notwithstanding, Mr. Adams won't feel too particularly disappointed with the outcome to the matinee, given the audience's most favorable reaction to the knights' improvisation during the opening sketch.

As he and Santana cross under the billboard border separating the midway from the white city, he mentions something about how he hopes the late show will prove just as charming to the people of Storm Lake as the early one did, without the moon jinxing anything. Santana doesn't listen to him at all, though.

(She only waits for Brittany.)

Puck parts from Santana once they reach their tent, saying that he needs to speak with Finn about something or other that Ken would like them to do together before the evening fair, and not long after he disappears down the tent row, Brittany arrives, just as Santana somehow knew that she would, changed back into her tatty blue and so beautiful that Santana can hardly do anything for it.

_"Hola, bonita,"_ Santana says, knowing that Brittany will hear the compliment in her voice, even if she doesn't understand it in words.

Brittany smiles in response but in a quiet way. She wears her soft, queer expression and seems unusually still. At first, Brittany's reserve surprises Santana—and particularly considering that Brittany just helped to put on such a lively circus—but then Brittany sidles right up beside her, their elbows brushing together, and Santana forgets about anything else except how good Brittany's skin feels against her skin, even in small doses.

(She gasps and knows exactly why.)

"Stevie Evans wanted me to tell you that you danced really pretty during the gypsy act today, darlin'," Brittany says, foregoing a hello.

With anyone else, Santana might feel too self-conscious to make a reply, but with Brittany, Santana revels in the teasing and teases back in kind. "Oh, did he now?" she smirks, brushing her elbow against Brittany's again, this time purposefully.

Brittany flushes. "Yup," she says. "I snuck over to your backstage area so that he and I could watch you together from the hole in the tent."

Santana laughs, low in her throat. "I'll bet he couldn't take his eyes off me, could he?"

Brittany shrugs and bites her lip, her ears turning even pinker than before. "I wouldn't know," she says artlessly, staring at Santana like she couldn't look away for anything.

(Her eyes burn like the blue heart of a flame, intensely bright and so, so rare.)

(The stoked feeling kindles again low in Santana's belly and she remembers yesterday, the ghost imprint of Brittany's touch hot upon her skin.)

Brittany's attention proves so intense Santana can't help but squirm under it. Santana had felt silly and wound up until this moment, but now she takes her cues from Brittany, who, despite her jokes about Stevie Evans' sudden interest in Santana's performance, seems decidedly serious or even reverent, like a girl about to pray for her fondest desire in church, lighting votive candles to illuminate her faith.

Santana watches Brittany's eyes shift between her and the tent and then watches again as Brittany wets her bottom lip with her tongue and then swallows, hard. Brittany's reverence changes into nervousness.

(Like she's just made a decision about something, but she isn't sure if it's the right one.)

"Britt, are you all right?" Santana asks, her own gaze jumping back and forth between Brittany's eyes. She reaches out for Brittany's hand, not sure whether she means to soothe Brittany or herself in taking it.

Brittany nods and swallows like she did before. "Can we go inside?" she asks suddenly. "Or maybe to somewhere else? Somewhere—?"

"Private?" Santana supplies.

Brittany nods. "Do you want to take a walk, maybe?" she says, extending her elbow to Santana.

Santana links their arms together. "Of course," she says, wondering if it's her own pulse or Brittany's that beats so wildly through the skin at the crook of her arm.

Brittany walks like a girl late to a very important appointment, tugging Santana along beside her quickly and purposefully down this tent row and then that one. She checks around corners, making sure they don't happen upon anyone who might interrupt their time together or hassle them to work. The faster Brittany walks, the more obvious it becomes to Santana that Brittany doesn't just want privacy—she wants privacy for a reason.

Eventually, Brittany leads Santana beyond the white city to the edge of the forest separating the camp from Storm Lake itself, and Santana turns to ask Brittany if she wants to disappear into the woods for a while—maybe to become "forest people," like they did yesterday in Onawa. She doesn't get the chance to ask her question before Brittany says something first, though.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

There are so many secrets that a Brittany could tell, but Santana can only think of one, at the moment—a secret she hopes so much that she and Brittany share, one that should be the same, word for word, between them. Her heart skips in her chest, fluttery as bird's wings, and her pulse pounds in her ears. She prepares herself to hear anything that Brittany has to say, trying not to want too much all at once.

"Yeah, BrittBritt?" Santana reaches for Brittany's hands just to have something to hold.

"I've—I've wanted to tell you this for a long time," Brittany stammers. "For a really, really long time, actually."

The invisible string in Santana pulls taut. "Yeah?"

Brittany starts to work over the knuckles on Santana's hands, thumbing the bones and the supple spaces between them. She nods again, maybe more to herself than to Santana. "Since that day when Mrs. Schuester made you count costumes in the dressing tent and you told me I needed a hat if I wanted to keep giving flowers to pretty ladies," she rambles.

All at once, Santana realizes her mistake.

There are so many secrets that a Brittany could tell; Santana had forgotten that, once upon a time, back before she ever realized that she loved Brittany at all, a certain one of Brittany's secrets preoccupied her almost as much as another one of Brittany's secrets preoccupies her now.

Almost.

_("Where do you always disappear to all the time?")_

_("I promise that if you can just be patient, I'll tell you the secret someday soon. Can you wait?")_

For her realization, Santana decides to spare Brittany more nervousness. "You mean you want to tell me where you disappear to all the time?" she guesses.

Brittany looks up, her eyes so wide and blue that Santana thinks she could swim in them. Briefly, Brittany seems like she might not understand Santana's reference—her eyebrows knit together, and her mouth opens just a bit—but then something changes in her expression.

"Oh," Brittany says simply. She blinks like a person might do upon waking, chasing after the last few scenes of a dream behind her eyes, unfocused and somehow disoriented. It takes her eyes a second to clear. "Oh, sure, darlin'. Do you still want to know about that?" she asks seriously, quirking her head to one side, looking at Santana on a slant.

(Santana wonders if she just missed something.)

Of course Santana wants to know whatever secrets Brittany would tell her.

"If you want to tell me, BrittBritt."

"Anything, darlin'," Brittany says and she gives Santana's hand a squeeze. "Come with me?" she says, nodding toward the woods.

Santana offers Brittany a small smile—_of course, anywhere, I love you_—and laces their fingers together more carefully. Pleased, Brittany gives Santana's hand a little squeeze and leads her from the searing sunlight of the open prairie to the patchwork shade of the forest.

The woods in Storm Lake smell dryer than the ones in Onawa, less musty and more like desiccated leaves and summer scorch and clay dirt. They're also sparser than the Onawan woods, with the trees spaced far apart from one another and sunlight streaming through the canopy.

In the distance, Santana can smell the waters of Storm Lake, though she cannot yet see them, fishy and stewing on such a hot day. Though the vegetation in the forest offers some relief from the heat, the forest still mostly feels like a tinderbox. If someone were to even say the word "fire" close to the trees, Santana thinks they might ignite.

Brittany leads Santana in a circuitous route, helping her to step over snagging tree stumps and duck beneath low-hanging creepers, holding aside Santana's long skirts where necessary, before stopping abruptly just under a tall oak tree.

"I've never shown anyone else this before," she admits.

"Shown anyone what?" Santana asks, confused, seeing nothing around them but Iowa flora, none of it in itself remarkable.

Brittany says simply, "This," and kicks at some dried leaves on the forest floor, brushing them aside with the edge of her foot, revealing an object underneath them.

Santana watches in wonderment as Brittany stoops to sweep away the rest of the leaves with her hands, unearthing a broad, flat surface laid out flat upon the forest floor. Santana can't hold back a gasp as she recognizes a human outline drawn over painted wood—the backboard from the Pierce's knife throwing act.

Brittany slides her fingers beneath the backboard, propping it up on an angle upon her knee, and then retrieves a second buried object from where the backboard once lay: her father's leather bandolier, complete with all its throwing knives.

"Brittany!" Santana yelps, as shocked as if she were Jim Hawkins watching Ben Gunn reveal his stolen treasure.

At first, Brittany doesn't register Santana's surprise. She stands, brushing forest detritus from her skirt, keeping hold to the backboard with one hand, clutching the bandolier by its straps with the other. Once she has herself upright, she rights the board, as well, cleaning dirt and leaves from it, her actions practiced and methodical.

Brittany doesn't meet Santana's eyes when she says, "Daddy never used to miss his mark."

Santana furrows her brow, not certain as to what type of secret Brittany tells her now, and Brittany perceives her confusion, clarifying, continuing on, still looking more at the board than at Santana.

"He used to have a perfect aim, back when Mama was his assistant, and even when I was first started out. But then a few years ago, he got a spot."

"A spot?" Santana repeats.

Brittany nods, and though she finally meets Santana's eyes, she somehow still acts guilty. "He says it's black and blurry. It's right here"—she squints, extending her right arm at a thirty degree angle from her shoulder, holding her hand out and away from her body—"and it won't go away. It covers up his vision so he can't see anything behind it or in front of it. It started out small, but it keeps getting bigger. It's the size of a Liberty Head nickel now."

"So he's going blind?"

Immediately, Santana hates herself for asking such an indelicate question, but Brittany doesn't seem to mind the indelicacy one whit.

(She never does.)

Instead, Brittany just nods. "If Mr. Adams finds out about it, he'll have to ask Daddy to retire, except that Daddy says there's really no asking about it. You can't have a blind knife thrower at the circus, or even a blind supe, and Mr. Adams sure won't keep me on just to peel carrots, even if Ma Jones put a good word in for me because Sam asked her to do it. Mrs. Schuester wouldn't want me for a seamstress, either. They'd have me and Daddy off the lists, whether any of us liked it or not, because business is business."

Santana glances between Brittany and the backboard and feels, for a moment, what she at first supposes must be a flutter of belated fear for Brittany's life.

But then Santana's gaze settles on the gouges burrowed deep into the wood grain, and suddenly she realizes that her fear that Brittany might come to harm is not in fact belated at all.

There will be another show tonight and another two shows tomorrow, and a dozen shows within just this one single week, and Mr. Pierce's vision will only deteriorate further with every passing one. If Brittany manages to survive all the shows without getting any more wounds than the ones she has got already or worse, it will be the kind of miracle that Santana's grandmother always swore could only come from praying to the most pious of saints for intercession.

All at once, Santana's heart pinches in her chest. She thinks of Mr. Pierce's many near misses during the last week and of Brittany's scar from his not-at-all-a-miss from earlier this year and fears for Brittany today and for every day yet to come, as long as the Pierce's still have an act at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus.

Only then does it occur to Santana why Mr. Pierce seems so pained all the time.

(For the man who must risk his daughter's life in order to save her livelihood, each day must bring with it some new agony.)

_("Didn't your daddy leave you anything?")_

"That's why I've been practicing," Brittany says helpfully, nodding toward the backboard.

Santana blanches.

"You mean with the knives? Britt, where did you—? When did you bring all this here?" she asks, her thoughts still muddled with confusion and heartache and worry concerning everything Brittany just revealed to her.

"It hurts Daddy's head, straining to see all the time, so he takes naps before the first show and after the second one," Brittany says. "He goes straight to our tent after the matinee and leaves the gear to me. I bring it out here before I even change out of my costume."

Santana's eyes widen. "You mean your father doesn't know you have this here?" she gapes.

(Brittany's bravery always both impresses Santana and startles her, too.)

(Santana's heart gives a firm tug in her chest when she realizes that Brittany must have skipped the last several days at knife throwing practice to spend time helping her with chores.)

"He can't know," Brittany says quietly. "Not him or Mr. Adams—not yet. Not until I get good enough to convince Mr. Adams to let me take over the act."

Brittany's expression is a pleading one, not directed at Santana but at the absent Mr. Adams and maybe even at the absent Mr. Pierce, as well. Brittany grips the edge of the backboard tightly and wets her lips, looking both young and old at once all of a sudden.

It seems that even the girl who breaks the rules at every turn can still feel the weight of them—that she also knows that time has become her solemn enemy.

(Somehow, Brittany's entrapment hurts Santana more than her own ever has.)

"Mr. Adams won't like the idea of a lady throwing knives, even if it's me, and Ken and Daddy won't like it, either," Brittany explains, "but once they see me throw, they'll let me on the lists—they'll have to."

"So you've taught yourself to throw?" Santana says, taking a step toward Brittany.

Without thinking about it, Santana reaches for the backboard, fingers brushing over the wood and the wounds in the wood, tracing over the deep series of gouges around the human outline, stopping just before they touch the few gouges imbedded, dangerous, within the outline's borders.

Now that Santana stands close to her, Brittany watches Santana carefully, searching for something in Santana's face that she seems to find almost immediately.

"Two-hundred and twenty-four clean throws in a row now," Brittany says matter-of-factly. "Two-hundred and twenty-four clean throws, and I just keep telling myself that once I reach two-fifty or maybe three hundred, I'll finally get the courage to ask Sam for his help."

"Get the courage to ask Sam for his help with—?"

"To ask him if he'll stand against the board for me," Brittany clarifies. When Santana meets Brittany's eyes, Brittany shrugs one shoulder. "I just don't want to make a mistake. Sam's my friend, and—," her statement trails away.

Santana speaks right away and without thinking.

"I'll stand against the board for you."

Her statement hangs like a flag without wind, and both she and Brittany stare at each other, equally surprised at the boldness of it.

Santana's hand still lingers upon the backboard, fingers fanned out, star-like, just above a deadly gouge along the human figure's throat. A tremble runs through Santana's body, and, for a second, she wonders if being in love can somehow make a person fatally insensible.

Brittany gawps at Santana like she has never seen anything like Santana before. Her look is startled and concerned but also hopeful, in spite of itself.

Part of Santana expects Brittany to demur the offer—to say something like _You don't have to do that, darlin'_ or even _You can't_ or _I won't let you_—and, indeed, Brittany appears as if everything in her wants to do just that. She bites her lip and shifts her weight between her two feet on the ground, anxious.

But then she doesn't say what Santana had expected.

(She never does.)

Instead, Brittany quirks her head to one side, eyes tracing over Santana's face again and again, like no matter how much Brittany sees Santana, she still won't ever be able to fully puzzle her out. Though Brittany stands up straight, she suddenly seems very small.

"Why?" Brittany asks.

She speaks in the same small, forlorn voice she uses whenever she talks about her supposedly clumsy stitches or answers to one of Mrs. Schuester's sharp-tongued reprimands.

Santana's heart clenches in her chest.

(It makes a decision before her head can fill with too many worries otherwise.)

She returns Brittany's deep look, finding the bluest part of Brittany's eyes and fixing in on it, mooring herself there, ship to pier. Her hand moves down the backboard.

"Because I trust you," Santana says, and the surety in her words should maybe surprise her, but it doesn't. "And because I want to." She reaches for Brittany's hand, curled over the edge of the backboard, and slides their fingers together so that both of them hold the board upright as one. She can feel the pulse beating through the thin, pale skin between Brittany's knuckles. "I need you to stay here at the circus with me," she admits.

"Me, too," Brittany says, barely above a whisper, "but, Santana—"

"I want to," Santana repeats, more firmly this time. She squeezes Brittany's hand. "Please."

Brittany glances between the bandolier, strung with knives, still dangling from her grasp, and Santana's sure expression. Her mouth hangs slightly ajar, and Santana can hear the shortness in her breath. When Brittany next speaks, she does so in a very small voice.

"Nobody ever trusts me with important things."

Santana's heart clenches in her chest again.

Brittany almost looks away from Santana then, filled with self-doubt and the kind of shame that only comes from never precisely fulfilling the expectations others hold for you, however low or high they may be, but Santana fights to keep Brittany's gaze, standing on tiptoe to put their faces more closely together until she gains Brittany's full attention.

"Britt," she says seriously, "do you remember what you told me yesterday in the tent?"

Without breaking their eye contact, Brittany shakes her head no, a lock of hair falling down over her face. She still wears a pout, one that Santana would kiss from her lips if not for the fact that Santana still had something incredibly urgent yet to say.

Santana doesn't waver. "You promised you would die before you hurt me," she reminds Brittany, "and you've never broken a promise to me yet. I don't think you'll ever break a promise to me. I trust you."

Brittany turns even stiller than she has yet. A worshipful something else lights in her eyes.

"Okay," she says, letting out the breath she'd held.

"Okay," Santana says back.

Brittany thumbs over Santana's knuckle, memorizing the feel of it anew. "I promise I won't hurt you," she says reverently, and, even though Santana knows that Brittany speaks almost more to herself than to her, she feels compelled to reply.

"I know you won't," she agrees.

Somehow, it feels like the most important thing Santana will say to Brittany all day, even as important as _I love you_, if it ever comes to that.

Briefly, Santana and Brittany stand still, holding each other's hands, and Santana thinks back, for a moment, on how gently Brittany touched her yesterday in the tent, and supposes that it is a rare and precious thing that two people should trust each other as much as she and Brittany do—and especially considering that they have known each other for only such a very short time so far. Gratitude spreads, warm, through Santana's chest. Brittany gives Santana's thumb one last stroke before speaking.

"All right," she says, shifting Santana's hand away so that she can prop the backboard against the oak tree. "You'll have to stand perfectly still and not even move a little bit."

She adjusts the board where it stands, fixing it to one spot, and gestures for Santana to take a place in front of it. Nerves jitter in Santana's belly, but she ignores them, focusing instead upon following Brittany's instructions in absolute, situating herself in front of the human outline, planting her feet firmly upon the forest floor.

Once Santana stills, Brittany sets the bandolier down at her and Santana's feet. Brittany reaches for Santana and readjusts Santana's position, piloting Santana by the shoulders until Santana stands just at the perfect angle, arms fanned out at her sides and feet set slightly apart.

"Right," Santana says.

"Right," Brittany repeats. She keeps her hands set upon Santana's shoulders, holding Santana in place. "Now you have two other jobs, besides just holding still. First, you have to count throws. There are six knives in all, and you want to make sure that I throw all of them before you move from your place. Second, you've got to watch me, your eyes on my eyes the whole time, because that's the trick—that's how I'll know that I can throw and that you're ready to be not-a-target, and how I'll figure where not to aim. As long as I can see your eyes and you can see mine, I'll throw clean. It's simple."

At Brittany's word, Santana remembers the strange exchange between Mr. Pierce and Brittany today before he left her and Santana to roam the streets in Storm Lake, suddenly understanding it better than she did before.

_(You ready, baby girl?)_

_(Sure, I'm ready, Daddy.)_

But wait.

"Britt," Santana says suddenly, her mind catching on something, "if your father can only throw clean when he sees your eyes, how does the blindfold trick at the end of your act work?"

For the first time since Santana caught up with her after the show, Brittany truly grins, mouth lifting into a pleased cat-smile, as if Santana's curiosity couldn't delight her more. She shifts one of her hands from Santana's shoulders and gives the backboard several sharp raps with her knuckles, banging out a quick, steady rhythm, like the drum cadence for a very lively military march.

"By sound," she says simply, pleased to share her secret.

Of course, the instant Brittany reveals the trick, Santana immediately wonders how she never noticed Brittany rapping at the board before while watching the show. Does Santana really focus so much attention on willing Mr. Pierce's throws away from Brittany that she fails to hear Brittany's signal to him?

Santana's thoughts snag again. "So why can't your father use sound to do the rest of the act, without the blindfold, then? Why does it matter if he has a spot? Couldn't you just knock on the board through the whole act?"

For Santana's question, Brittany's smile turns a bit sad. She bites her lips into her mouth and shakes her head. "The crowd goes quiet for William Tell," she explains, "but they're fluttery through the rest of the act before it—they clap and holler. We couldn't make them stay quiet for the whole thing, even if Will Schuester told them to do it."

"How have I never heard you knocking on the board before?" Santana asks.

Brittany's cat-smile returns, just a bit: "Circus magic, darlin'—you never knew to listen for it."

"Brittany—," Santana starts.

Brittany gives Santana's shoulder a little squeeze. "We won't try the blindfold today," she says, and she would be teasing if she hadn't suddenly turned so still.

Santana hasn't anymore questions, and Brittany hasn't anymore answers.

They've only the equipped bandolier and Brittany's promise between them.

_I'd die first._

Brittany draws a shaky breath, and Santana nods, urging her back. Slowly, Brittany's free hand slips from Santana's shoulder. She stoops to retrieve the bandolier from the ground and steps away from the backboard, taking five long paces until she stands fifteen feet from Santana.

With another shaking breath, Brittany slithers into the bandolier so that it hangs across her shoulder, dwarfing her with its size, strange with its rough leather against the cobalt calico of her dress. She shakes her hair back from her face, smoothing it behind her ears to clear her field of vision and then fixing Santana with an unflinching stare.

"Give me a wave when you're ready," Brittany says. Then, "No rush."

Santana checks herself.

Is she ready?

The practical part of Santana can't think of anything more foolish than what she is about to do. Even though she does trust Brittany with her very life, she also knows better than to think that even love or Brittany's practice regimen could save her from sheer fateful accident.

The part of Santana that doesn't speak but only feels wants to give Brittany this gift more than anything, though.

It trusts Brittany wholly and completely.

Santana draws a deep breath, filling her lungs and expanding her ribcage. She looks around the forest, watching the way white light streams through the gaps in the trees, finding prisms hidden in the foliage. A squirrel darts across a branch and Santana loves to watch it. A bird warbles from the brush and Santana loves its song. Brittany stands before Santana, her expression solemn and drawn, her whole self beautiful with a kind of united purpose, and Santana loves her more than she ever thought it was possible to love anything or anyone before.

Santana fixes her gaze upon Brittany, finding that deepest part of Brittany's eyes—the black quick against the blue, like midnight and midday in a single sky—and holds her breath. Brittany returns her look. Santana counts out one, two, three, nods her head, and raises her hand.

It happens in an instant.

Santana would think she might fixate upon the knife—the shape of it, its trajectory, the way it glints upon the light—the same as she does while watching the Pierce's act in the big top, but she doesn't. She only notices how Brittany's pupils dilate in the split second before Brittany releases her knife, eclipsing everything else.

Brittany steps forward with one foot, lobbing the knife with the full force of her body. She moves in a blur, a blear of strength and blue. Her gaze never once breaks from Santana's and her eyes are sharp and sure and piercing.

Santana stops breathing.

Stops moving.

Her insides seize.

She wonders if she feels pain, but the knife hasn't hit yet.

_One._

She wonders if she feels pain and the knife has hit.

Her eyelids flitter, two seconds too late.

She remains still.

Wide-eyed.

She feels no pain at all.

The knife's hilt protrudes from the backboard just beside Santana's right ear, a few inches of the blade still visible beyond the wood. Santana sees metal in her peripheral vision, lodged into the board so near to her face that if she were to turn her head, she could kiss steel. Both board and blade reverberate, a dull drone against the forest quiet.

Though Santana feels compelled to move, she doesn't. Instead, she checks herself from the insides over, wonderfully aware of her own pulse, a hard throb over her skin and between her joints and around her bones; and her breath and the thoughts in her head; and always of Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, above all else. Santana remains impossibly still and holds her breath as Brittany's pupils expand again, just as they do when Brittany tells Santana secrets.

It happens so quickly, almost before Santana feels ready for it.

Brittany doesn't take another step, but she still lunges forward at an angle, her hips and arm moving in sync as she heaves a second throw toward the board.

Again, Santana holds her breath.

Again, her insides seize.

_Two._

The knife rushes by her and drives, hard, into the wood just above her right shoulder, so close that if she were to stand on tiptoe, her skin would touch the blade. A jolt runs through her body, and she shudders, eyelashes fluttering, though she wills herself to not fully blink. Something deep inside her trembles, the smallest flame in the hardest wind. She presses her palms flat against the board at her back, pulse hard and lively upon the pads of her fingers.

Animal fear writhes in the pit of her belly. Her body lists to run or toss itself upon the ground for cover, but she calms herself in Brittany's eyes, catching hold of careworn blue and wishing star gold and clinging to it, breathless.

She trusts.

Brittany's brow furrows with concentration as Brittany throws again, the knife spinning on a full rotation and landing fierce against the backboard just beside Santana's left ear.

_Three._

Santana swallows and stills herself.

Brittany throws.

_Four._

The knife lands just over Santana's left shoulder. Before Santana can swallow again, Brittany takes another lunge and releases her fifth quick blade, lodging it deep beside Santana's left elbow. Santana's whole body trembles, quickened with her heartbeat.

_Five._

The knife actually wobbles from the force of Brittany's arm, its flat slapping at Santana's skin, harmless though unexpected. Santana shudders and her jaw trembles as though it were winter and frigid and not July and one-hundred degrees outside.

One more knife.

If Santana were a girl accustomed to enjoying good fortune, Brittany's successes so far might comfort her. As it is, she can't help but wonder if this next throw will be the one where her luck runs out. She looks to Brittany and trusts her, though she can trust nothing else, and Brittany meets Santana with perfect evenness.

Santana wets her lips.

_I trust you._

Brittany throws, this time in a high, bold arc, the knife tumbling hilt over blade in a complete round until Santana loses sight of it passing overhead of her. For an instant, Santana's heart ceases to beat in her chest, and her insides thrum. She startles, caught up in the brightness and closeness and tightness of the moment. Brittany's pupils flare so wide that they nearly blot out the blue of her irises.

_Six._

Santana feels the impact just above the crown of her head, though she cannot see the knife. She feels the board reverberate at her back and through the palms of her hands. She feels the strength in Brittany's arm, even from so far away.

She feels no pain.

"Santana," Brittany says her name, an invocation.

And at her word, Santana crumbles, sinking against the backboard so that it supports her weight, rather than her knees. Santana's heart jumpstarts in her breast and a wave of heat and belated nerves washes through her, quick.

For a long moment, Brittany and Santana stare at one another, forgetting the space between them. To Santana, Brittany's eyes look wild, even more so than the bracken wood. Santana loses herself in them, feeling for an instant what Brittany feels, so connected to Brittany that she doesn't breathe her own breath.

Brittany doesn't move her eyes from Santana's face. Instead, she steps forward, her footfalls almost silent upon the forest floor except for the shush of dried leaves rustling at her ankles. Her fingertips find Santana first, brushing, feather-light, over Santana's wrists and forearms, tracing upward until they hover just above Santana's face, so close that Santana can almost feel them.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" Brittany whispers, so quietly that Santana can scarcely hear her speak.

Santana can't find her own voice yet, so she only nods in reply.

Her signal seems to break the spell.

All at once, Brittany lets out a voiced breath and her hand finds Santana's face. She thumbs over Santana's cheek and around the shell of Santana's ear, trusting touch to prove Santana's answer more so than sight.

Even from such little contact, Santana feels Brittany quaking, shivering all the way up from her bones. Santana wonders if the tremors started before or after Brittany made her throws. She also wonders if they might ever stop again.

For an instant, Santana suspects that Brittany either wants to give her a kiss or wants to receive one from her. "BrittBritt," Santana says, and that's all it takes.

It happens in an instant.

Brittany probably means to laugh, but instead the sound comes out jagged and choked—a single sob against the forest quiet. Her face crumples, her mouth falling open and her eyes welling suddenly with tears. She draws a hand up over lips, perhaps in an effort to restrain herself from crying, but it's no use; all of Brittany's stoicism shatters like crystal dropped upon hard, stone ground.

Santana jolts. "Brittany!" she squeaks, reaching out to gather Brittany into her arms, eager to quell Brittany's distress before she even knows what's caused it.

For Santana's invitation, Brittany collapses against her, allowing Santana to catch her up, pushing her head against Santana's breast and wrapping her arms tightly about Santana's waist. Her tears wet Santana's skin just at Santana's collarbone, and she trembles, as vulnerable and wrecked as a girl tossed overboard.

"I'm sorry," she cries. "I'm sorry."

The suddenness with which Brittany throws herself against Santana catches Santana off balance, and she stumbles backward into the backboard, slumping against it, tugging Brittany down with her, slowly, until they both sit, tangled, in the leaves on the forest floor, their skirts and legs folded haphazardly beneath them. Santana still holds Brittany fast and immediately begins to press kisses into Brittany's hair.

Brittany's knives protrude from the backboard.

(A steel halo overhead.)

"It's all right," Santana promises. "Brittany, I'm fine. You didn't hurt me. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Brittany asks, looking up at Santana through red eyes, clinging to her so tightly that Santana wonders if she ever intends to let go.

It's clear to Santana that Brittany doesn't cry from sorrow but rather for the same reason that Santana herself cried once she realized that she loved Brittany just a few days ago—namely, because she feels caught up in something so much bigger and deeper and vaster than herself.

Santana shares Brittany's feeling, for it occurs to her that now that Brittany has looked into her eyes to throw, Brittany shall never have another person stand before the board for her except Santana—she can't, and she won't.

Something of Santana has nestled itself deep inside Brittany and made its home there, connecting the two girls in a way that has something to do with invisible strings and thread rings and, above all, their sweet, sacred, shared _something else_.

If Brittany will be a knife thrower, then Santana will be her girl.

Were Santana to believe in a good kind of fate, she might believe that she had even arrived at the circus especially to help Brittany, though she hadn't known it until now.

As it is, Santana realizes that it isn't the right time to speak to Brittany concerning this new inevitability between them—not with Brittany so shaken and hating herself for putting Santana in danger.

(During Santana's first days at the circus, she believed that Brittany was fearless.)

(Now she knows better: Brittany is brave.)

Santana holds Brittany tighter, stilling her tremors. She kisses Brittany's head again, soft. "You don't have anything to feel sorry about," she promises. "You were perfect, Brittany. You threw perfectly. Please don't cry or else I'll cry, too."

"Okay," Brittany agrees, her voice still thick with tears. She sniffs. "But only because the squirrels might laugh at us if we both start bawling."

Santana's heart squeezes in her chest, tight with so much love for the girl lying in her arms.

"Brittany," Santana coos and kisses Brittany's hair again, reveling in the slip of it upon her lips and how it carries Brittany's scent, the campfire, sweet, sleep, apple, and wind-wear of it. "You're okay," she says firmly and it isn't a question. "You're better than okay, actually. Let me tell you: I thought that I'd seen a knife thrower whose precision went unmatched in these fine United States, but then I just saw this other knife thrower—a lady—and she threw just as well as he did or better even. And if I had a nickel, I'd pay to see her throw again, any night of the week."

"Really?" Brittany asks, her voice suddenly small once more.

"Really, really," Santana assures her.

Brittany sniffs back the last of her tears and wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist, sloppy. "Okay," she says simply, leaning down to rest her head against Santana's chest again. She sighs, and Santana does, too.

The two girls remain tangled up in each other for a very long time. Eventually, Brittany's breathing turns even, and her muscles relax. She sinks into Santana, and Santana kisses her head again. The thing in Santana that usually runs mouse-quick and skittish slows and calms. Peace spreads through her to match the quiet of the woods.

"Brittany," she says, testing her voice against the silence. "Brittany, I—," she chooses her words carefully, selecting each one individually as a shopper might select the best, ripest apples to buy from a bushel. "I have a secret I want to tell you, but I—I don't think I can tell it to you yet—b-because it's something hard to say. I want to tell it to you, though. A lot."

She stiffens, waiting for Brittany's reply, and thinks _Oh God_.

(When Santana first arrived at the circus, Puck told her that the truth didn't matter anymore, but Santana knows he was wrong; it matters so, so much.)

(Santana always wants to give Brittany things.)

Brittany shifts in her arms. Her pulse quickens again, beating hard and fast at the curve of Brittany's neck and where Brittany's chest leans against Santana's. Even so, when Brittany next speaks, she does so evenly.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay?" Santana repeats, in love with the sweetness of Brittany's voice.

(Something inside Santana perks up, a flower under a healthful sun.)

"Yup," Brittany says surely. Her lips shift into what must be her cat-smile against Santana's skin. Then, "I'm good at waiting for things."

"Oh. Okay," says Santana, surprised in the pleasantest way.

A bright, grateful feeling flutters in her chest, and she adores everything about Brittany perhaps more than she has ever before. She kisses Brittany's head again, pressing butterfly-lips to Brittany's hair wherever she can.

Brittany giggles, "That tickles, darlin'."

"Really?" Santana smirks, kissing Brittany's head for what must be the twelfth time in a minute, moving closer to Brittany's ear. Brittany giggles again and squirms in Santana's arms, and Santana likes her reaction so well that she kisses Brittany just at the shell of her ear in a way that she knows will cause Brittany to squirm again.

"Not fair!" Brittany protests, wriggling in Santana's arms and laughing now outright. Santana tries to kiss Brittany again but only manages to graze her lips against the top of Brittany's head. Santana laughs, just like Brittany does, her Brittany-smile wide and bright. Brittany whines, "If you're gonna kiss like that, you've got to kiss on the lips, too!"

"Do I?" Santana teases, planting another peck just at the back of Brittany's neck, at the top of her spine, through a slippery curtain of Brittany's hair. The stoked feeling flares in the pit of Santana's stomach and between her legs.

(She would like very much to kiss Brittany all over, she thinks.)

"Yup!" Brittany says gamely, suddenly moving her hands across Santana's back and wiggling her fingers against Santana's sides through Santana's shirt, pressing into Santana's ribs, all in one quick move.

Santana squirms, squeaks, and laughs louder than she did before. Though she tries to flinch away from Brittany, Brittany holds her tight around the torso. "Britt!" Santana yelps, attempting to flatten herself against the forest floor to escape from Brittany's tickling. She laughs from the back of her throat and pushes at Brittany's shoulders, silly in her skin and so, so giddy. "Help!"

Brittany presses a kiss to the underside of Santana's jaw just against her neck but doesn't relent from her tickling. No one has teased Santana like this since Santana was a small child and her father liked to make her giggle to tire her out before bedtime. Santana tries to tickle Brittany back, but to no avail. She can't stop from laughing or dodge Brittany's touch.

"You're a menace, Brittany Pierce!" she shrieks.

In the next second, Brittany attempts to press herself over Santana, and Santana's knee slips under Brittany's back. Seizing the opportunity, Santana rocks her body, and, using all her strength, rolls over, flipping Brittany onto her back so that Brittany lies upon a bed of leaves with Santana hovering above her, their hips bracketed together.

Santana had intended to retaliate against Brittany's tickling once she gained her advantage, but now she finds herself stalled, suddenly stupid for the awesomeness of having Brittany underneath her. Though Santana so often associates Brittany with sunlight, Brittany breathes beauty beneath the forest shade, her cheeks and chest flushed, her seashell-pink lips slightly ajar, a long shadow cast over her face.

It immediately occurs to Santana that she has never straddled Brittany like this before.

The heat in Santana's belly turns urgent. Wet ribbons swim in Santana's quick as she attunes to the way Brittany breathes beneath her, Brittany's breast rising and falling, a beat running everywhere over Brittany's skin where Santana can feel it.

Santana and Brittany stare at each other, their tomfoolery forgotten in an instant.

"Hi," Brittany says, her pupils turning wider and blacker than before.

"Hi," Santana says back, dumb with wanting.

A crash.

Both girls jump, and Brittany gives a violent twitch beneath Santana's legs. Santana's pulse leaps from where it had settled deep in her belly all the way back up to her throat in an instant. Everything inside her turns fleet and readies itself to run. She scrambles from atop Brittany, finding her feet, and Brittany stands, too, flustered.

Both girls search the forest clearing, their eyes darting over every tree and bush for some sign of an intruder. They check in the direction of the camp.

They see no one.

Nothing.

Then.

The backboard lies against the ground, fallen over. It rests at an angle, propped up against the six knife hilts near the top. Two or three knife tips poke all the way through its back like little, fanged cat teeth.

Both Brittany and Santana realize what must have happened at once and soften, letting out the breaths they held, swallowing, hard, gulping down their nerves. Santana gives a flighty laugh. Her insides still rings like an alarm bell, though she doesn't actually feel frightened anymore. Brittany laughs, too, bashful all of a sudden.

"Damn thing," she mutters, and both she and Santana laugh.

For a second, Santana hovers, not sure what she and Brittany ought to do and unused to feeling scared then safe then scared again so quickly in succession. Brittany smiles and shakes her head, laughing her silent laugh. "We should probably get going, darlin'," she says, a peculiar expression written across her face. "I need to put these things away before Daddy wakes up from his nap anyway."

"Right," Santana agrees, suddenly remembering that such a thing as a circus exists outside herself and Brittany.

Brittany offers her a smile. "Thank you," she says softly.

(It feels like something else again.)

Santana smiles back. "You're welcome," she replies. Then, "You have a leaf in your hair."

Brittany grins and straightens up so that she looks quite as dashing as she did at during the knight sketch at the matinee. "All the best forest people wear leaves, Santana," she says thoughtfully, making no effort to remove the offending leaf from her head. "They're very fashionable."

Santana grins.

_I love you._

"I'll bet they are."

* * *

><p>The girls flip the backboard over and pry Brittany's father's knives from its face, one by one. It takes a strong arm to wrench them up, and Santana feels embarrassed that she often has to winch them free using two hands and several tugs while Brittany seems able to pluck each blade up as quickly and easily as if it were a weak weed in soft garden soil.<p>

_"Por supuesto, debes impresionarla. Muestrale tu debilidad. Bien,"_ Santana mutters to herself.

She looks up to find Brittany biting back a smile, her eyes wonderfully bright and soft. Brittany smiles in full when Santana quirks an eyebrow at her.

"Wiggling the hilt back and forth before you pull it up helps a bit," she says.

"You're going to keep that leaf in your hair all day, aren't you?" Santana says back.

(They smile.)

* * *

><p>After the girls extricate all six knives from the backboard and sheaf them in Brittany's father's bandolier, Brittany gathers up the target, and they start back towards the white city, making plans for Santana to scout ahead for Brittany to make sure no one sees her with the gear once they step beyond the tree line, back onto the prairie.<p>

As they draw closer to the edge of the wood, Brittany's expression turns contemplative.

"I think I know why it's so easy for people to find us all the time," she announces.

Santana perks up, interested. "Why?"

Brittany smiles but then looks down at her toes, retiring. "Because whenever I'm with you, my heart beats so loud that I'm pretty sure that everyone at the whole circus can hear it," she says artlessly, her cheeks and ears flooding pink.

(Santana's heart flitters in her chest, as if on bird's wings.)

For a second, she flusters, but then she knows just what to say. "Mine, too," she admits, leaning over to peck Brittany on the cheek as they walk.

(She can tell that she'll be able to say her secret to Brittany soon.)

* * *

><p>When the girls emerge from the forest, Santana notices how much the sun has moved in the sky; it no longer hangs centrally but veers toward the western horizon. The air still swelters, almost abuzz with heat, but the shadows falling after the tents and trees stretch longer than they did before.<p>

Just before she and Brittany step out into the open, Santana suddenly remembers something that she wanted to say to Brittany before but didn't. She takes her opportunity now: "Britt, you really should talk to Mr. Adams about your act soon. I think you're ready to show him, and I—I'll help you do it, if you like."

Brittany glances at Santana in her peripheral vision. Though Santana had expected her to flinch at the suggestion, she doesn't. Instead, she says simply, "Soon," and nods. After a minute, she adds, "We should probably practice more first, though."

She doesn't necessarily sound pleased at the idea that she'll have to lob more knives at Santana's head, but she does seem resigned to it. She shifts the board and bandolier in her arms, getting a better grip on them.

Santana nods, then adds, "Maybe we could have Sam steal us an apple out of the chuck so we can practice William Tell without the blindfold for a while."

For some reason, her suggestion makes Brittany smile, and widely. "Good idea," Brittany says, tucking the thought away for later as she and Santana finally make it to the camp.

Brittany waits just beyond the white city while Santana runs ahead to check that no potential obstacles or intrusions will obstruct their path. Once Santana returns to give Brittany the go-ahead, the girls heft the board along together, coming right up against the back flaps of the Pierce family tent, which Brittany parts, opening them just widely enough that she'll have room to take the board and bandolier back inside.

Santana refrains from breathing as Brittany pokes her head through the aperture, checking to see if her father has remained asleep in her absence. After several seconds, Brittany withdraws from the tent and turns to Santana.

_All clear_, she mouths, gathering up the board under one arm while carrying the bandolier slung across the other.

For a second, Santana feels terribly eager to glimpse the inside of Brittany's tent, but then she imagines what might happen if she were to poke her head inside after Brittany only to have Mr. Pierce suddenly awaken and discover her and Brittany together, toting his gear between them. Thankfully, Brittany doesn't motion for Santana to accompany her when she slips through the tent flaps, and neither does she leave the gap open wide enough after her for Santana to properly see inside. She goes alone, quick and silent, and Santana watches from without.

(The Pierce's tent remains a mystery—one that Santana doesn't feel certain she would want to solve, even if given the chance.)

For as long as Santana can't see Brittany, she frets, wondering what might happen if Brittany's father ever were to catch Brittany practicing knife throws while he slept. Santana's heart beats in syncopation, and she glances around the tents neighboring the Pierce's, wringing her hands together and waiting some sign that Brittany might need her help because something's turned out wrong.

Just when it seems to Santana that Brittany has taken too long at her task, Brittany emerges from the back flaps, head and shoulders first, and Santana startles at the sight of her. After checking down the row, Brittany steps into the sun, drawing the canvas closed behind her.

"Good and done," Brittany whispers, sidling up beside Santana, a cat-grin curling her lips. She begins to say something else, but doesn't get the chance.

"There you are!"

It takes Santana a half-second to realize that the voice saying "There you are!" belongs to a woman and another half-second after that to realize that that woman is none other than Mrs. Schuester, who appears from around the far side of the tent with Ken waddling after her like a very obedient trained toad.

In her arms, Mrs. Schuester carries what Santana immediately recognizes as the three velveteen elephant blankets that she and Brittany hid in the ladies' dressing tent before the matinee. Rather unsurprisingly, Mrs. Schuester appears as unpleased as a cat caught out-of-doors in a rainstorm, for Brittany and Santana never finished their chore.

"So you two have another day off, do you? Funny that Mr. Adams forgot to mention it to me or to Ken!" Mrs. Schuester snips. Just then, she spies the leaf still laced in Brittany's hair. "I see you've been off to play in the woods again, have you?" It isn't really a question. "We had our down day yesterday!"

Mrs. Schuester's every furious word echoes against the first partitions of the white city, loud and scathing, and Santana can't help but cower for her volume, knowing that Mr. Pierce sleeps just a few feet away from them inside the Pierce tent. Santana shuffles where she stands, unspeakably worried about what might happen if Mr. Pierce were to wake and hear that Brittany had sloughed work again.

(Santana would gladly bear Mrs. Schuester's scolding if only Mrs. Schuester would lower her voice.)

"It was lunchtime—," Brittany starts to explain, but Mrs. Schuester won't hear any excuses.

"Finn Hudson could have done more embroidery than the two of you did if I had given him those blankets, a sewing kit, and an hour to do the work!" she snaps. "Did you even lift a needle?"

Before she can stop herself, Santana blurts out, "Calm down!"

Mrs. Schuester's mouth falls open.

She probably couldn't feel more offended if Santana were to slap her.

Just at that moment, the back flaps on the Pierce's tent part, and Mr. Pierce emerges from behind the canvas, wearing the heaviest, meanest scowl that Santana thinks she's ever seen. He stumbles outside, taking in the whom and what of the small party situated just behind his tent: the head foreman and the ringmaster's wife shouting abuse at the impertinent gypsy girl, and, to what must be his great consternation, his own daughter.

His brow furrows, deeply worn, gullies through a fresh-ploughed field.

_Oh God._

"Britt?" Mr. Pierce says questioningly, his voice even dryer than usual. He seems at a loss as to what to make of the scene before him. "What's going on?"

"I'll tell you what's going on!" Ken thunders, puffing himself up and pointing a stubby, accusatory finger at Brittany and Santana. "What's going on is that your girl keeps running off with her little nigger friend when there's work to be done, without a thought to the welfare of this company for it! Today marks the second time this week that Missus Schuester and I have had to mount up a search for these two wastrels! And it's not just that they shirk their chores—they even hid their mending job so ain't nobody else in this camp that could finish it for them, either!"

Mr. Pierce blinks, perhaps against the harsh sunlight, perhaps against Ken's harsh words. He peers at Brittany and Santana from under his heavy brow, searching them up and down. "That true, baby girl?" he asks.

(Santana shrinks at his question.)

(Somehow, she feels the same way that she always did when her own father felt disappointed in her, knowing that Mr. Pierce feels disappointed in Brittany.)

Brittany shuffles her feet in the grass and gives a lame shrug. "We didn't mean to hide the blankets, Daddy," she mumbles, stopping at that because there isn't anything else to say.

"There! You see?" Ken crows, as triumphant as if he were lawyer who had proven his case in a court of law. "She don't deny that they've been in the woods today!"

Mr. Pierce remains unsettlingly calm. "You been in the woods instead of doing your work?" he asks.

Brittany shuffles her feet again. She nods.

Briefly, Santana considers the injustice of the situation. If Mr. Pierce knew that Brittany had only gone into the woods because she wanted to save their family act and if he realized her bravery in so doing, he would most certainly defend Brittany's absence from camp life to Ken, rather than fix her with such a dissatisfied frown as he does now.

For a moment, Santana hates the circus because it is a place where so many secrets pile on top of one another that a person can hardly tell the truth about one thing without compromising something or someone else.

Santana wants very badly to clear Brittany's name to Mr. Pierce and to tell him how Brittany isn't lazy or wayward or out to shame him—all the opposite, in fact—but, of course, Santana knows that she can't do so, and especially not considering that the rules say she oughtn't to speak in this conversation unless someone asks something directly of her to start.

"Brittany clearly doesn't understand the importance of a hard day's work," Mrs. Schuester interjects, folding her arms over her apron and shaking her head at Brittany and Santana, disgusted with them.

"Spending time with the likes of this one can't help," Ken mutters, side-eyeing Santana. Then, he says, in a louder voice, "I think they ought to have some punishment, don't you?"

At Ken's suggestion, Mr. Pierce appears taken aback, and Santana doesn't know if it's because he hadn't thought to punish Brittany himself or because he dislikes Ken and Mrs. Schuester imposing themselves in his decision. He stokes over his unshaven face with a tired hand, clearing the sweat from it, and squints.

"Oh," he says. "Sure thing."

"Since they've already had their fun today, I think they oughtn't to have any spirits tonight with the rest of the company, wouldn't you say, Mr. Pierce?" Mrs. Schuester says smugly, looking very pleased with herself for her idea.

Mr. Pierce surveys Brittany and Santana up and down. If possible, he seems somehow even more haggard and pained than usual. He bites his lower lip into his mouth, and, after a second's deliberation with himself, nods.

"I suppose they oughtn't to," he says slowly.

"Serves 'em right," Ken gruffs.

Mrs. Schuester smirks, delighted with Mr. Pierce's verdict. "Very well," she says brightly. "Then I'll tell Ma Jones not to let them have any beer or cider with their supper. Let's just hope that this teaches them a lesson."

Mr. Pierce neither concurs nor disagrees with what Ken and Mrs. Schuester have said. Instead, he wipes his face again and turns to reenter his tent. As he goes, Santana can't help but notice how he ambles, unsteady on his feet and with a peculiar heaviness to his gait. Momentarily, she wonders if he might feel ill, but then she realizes that she doesn't know Mr. Pierce well enough to know one way or the other whether he truly seemed sickly or not.

Once Mr. Pierce disappears through the tent flaps, Mrs. Schuester shoots Brittany and Santana a positively evil look. "I'd have you finish the blankets now," she informs them, "but the show bell will ring soon, so there isn't time for it."

"If it were up to me, I'd have Mr. Adams cut you from the list," Ken growls. "You ain't worth half your pay." He points a stubby finger specifically at Santana: "I'll have words with your mister about you, you mark."

Both Brittany and Santana know better than to say anything in reply to Ken and Mrs. Schuester's admonishments; they nod in deference, shifting uncomfortably on the grass.

Mrs. Schuester shakes her head. "I have to go round up my girls to gather supplies for the knight sketch," she says, more to herself than to anyone. "Come on, Ken!" she snaps, gesturing for him to follow her back toward the midway side of the circus, beyond the billboards.

Santana can't say that she feels especially sorry to see either Mrs. Schuester or Ken go. She also can't say that she feels especially distraught concerning the punishment that they heaped upon her, either. After all, Santana doesn't even know what spirits taste like, never having drunk any before in her life. Who's to say she even would have even liked to drink beer and cider anyway?

Admittedly, the fact that Ken threatened to tell Puck concerning Santana's misconduct unnerves Santana somewhat but only because she fears what Puck might have to say about her spending every waking hour at Brittany's side. The less Puck knows about what Santana and Brittany get up to together during the day, the better things will be for them—and especially now that the girls must make time to practice knife throwing together.

Santana rolls her eyes at Mrs. Schuester and Ken as they go. Once they disappear from sight, she turns to face Brittany, who scarcely looks as indignant as Santana might have expected and instead actually seems somehow glum.

"I'm sorry I got you in trouble again," Brittany pouts.

(No one should look as precious as Brittany does wearing a sad face, Santana thinks. The people who make the rules simply shouldn't allow it.)

Santana flashes Brittany a consoling smile and reaches for her hand. "Britt," she says loftily, "I don't believe that you and I can go a day without getting into trouble together, so we might as well just resign ourselves to it."

Brittany's pout changes to a cat-smile. "We are trouble, darlin'," she says wisely.

Santana laughs, "And don't they know it!"

(Somewhere in the distance, the warning bell rings, but the girls pay it no mind.)

* * *

><p>Santana notices it as soon as she arrives upon the midway: a nervous, niggling energy which snakes around the booths and through the acts and all up and down the pitch, hearable in so many tight, high voices, seeable in so many wringing hands, and readable written over so many concerned faces, in swallowing throats and in blinking eyes.<p>

After feeling so many things with and for Brittany over the last few hours, it takes her a half-moment to realize why anyone might feel anxious right now at the evening fair, but then she remembers.

The moon.

In spite of herself and the sun still shining bright over Storm Lake, Santana glances up at the sky before ducking into her gazebo. She can't decide if it feels like a bad omen day or not, considering everything that's happened to her and Brittany since sunup.

Whatever Santana thinks about the moon, Ken seems to have already fixed his ideas about it; he stands at his usual post outside Santana's booth, muttering to himself about "hocus pocus" and checking his pocket watch over and over again, too frazzled to even properly harass Santana before the bell rings and patrons begin pouring onto the midway through the gates.

For the first time since the morning fair, Santana recalls that Mr. Adams discovered her "missing" cards and that she'll soon have a new tarot deck. Her heart sinks as the first patrons form a queue outside her gazebo.

In a few days' time, she'll have more than palms to read again.

(Maybe the moon does mean bad news after all.)

Santana tends to her first two patrons easily, promising the first man that his crop may perhaps fare well if he waters it diligently to counteract the extreme Iowa heat and the second that he will have many friends if he always treats his neighbors kindly and according to the Golden Rule. When Santana's third patron sits down in the chair, Santana doesn't expect to have any difficulty telling her fortune, either. She gestures for the woman to extend her hand.

The woman doesn't comply.

"May I—?" Santana starts, her words cloaked thick in her grandmother's accent.

But the woman doesn't allow Santana to finish her question. Instead, she opens the small handbill that she carries and produces from it a folded sheet of paper, which she then offers to Santana.

"Do you read?" the woman asks.

The question affronts Santana so much that her mouth actually falls open for it.

She stares at the woman, taking in the primness of the woman's clothes and the austerity of her demeanor for the first time. The woman reminds Santana of her grandmother and looks like someone who will not take kindly to any sort of dalliance or what she perceives as such.

"I—," Santana falters, not certain if it would be best to tell the truth in order to please the woman or to lie in order to maintain her façade as the mystical Madame Rossetti, gypsy vagabond.

The woman moves the paper closer to Santana's fingers, encouraging her to take it, and it's only as she does so that Santana realizes that the paper is actually a pamphlet with letters printed over the front in thick, black ink.

AVOID DAMNATION

THE WAY TO SALVATION IS CLEAR:

Sermon Preach'd by Rev. V. Templeton

of United Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

"Reverend Templeton says that we ought to spread the gospel to the heathens, as well as amongst our own number," the woman says seriously. "You're very young, dear. It's not too late for you to forsake the Devil and give up the wicked itinerant lifestyle you've come to live, if you'll just accept Jesus into your heart."

There are probably one-thousand things that Santana ought to say in response to the woman's words, but Santana can't think of any of them. Instead, Santana looks at the woman, dumbfounded, and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

"So you don't want me to read your palm, ma'am?"

(If Ken weren't so fussed about the bad news moon, Santana thinks that he might kill her.)

* * *

><p>When Santana wraps her pinky finger around Brittany's without first saying hello, sliding in beside Brittany to take a flower and a kerchief from Mrs. Schuester's girls, Brittany gives a little gasp, surprised that Santana would appear so suddenly behind her. Once they both have their favors and veils, she allows Santana to lead her away, following Santana from the backstage area toward the two dressing tents.<p>

Without saying anything to each other, the two girls tuck into the narrow alleyway between the canvas walls, hiding themselves from the rest of the company before the show, if only for a moment.

A timpani trill beats in Santana's chest.

She rises up on tiptoe. Her left hand holds Brittany's right, but her right hand traces over Brittany's neck and finds a place just at the hinge of Brittany's jaw. Brittany sinks into her touch and allows Santana to move her.

"I want to kiss you," Santana confides in a whisper, conspiratorial, tilting Brittany's head toward her.

Brittany inhales, sharp, and nods. "Okay," she says, waiting.

(Santana does just exactly what she wants.)

Everything about the kiss surprises Santana, despite the fact that she's the one to give it, from the way that even its first light press sends a shock down to her bones to how it makes her dizzy once it turns deeper, like dancing. It catches her up, though she had known what to expect, until she feels, for a moment, outside herself and somehow like she's managed to fit something infinitely great into a very slight space.

Though everything else in the day seethes with an almost unbearable heat, the inside of Brittany's mouth feels cool and still tastes of sarsaparilla, the lingering herbal-sweet of it.

At first, Brittany passively allows Santana to kiss her, but then she starts to kiss back and moves her lips upon Santana's in little nips and nudges. Her movements surprise Santana, too—and in the best way possible.

(Santana hadn't realized that she liked surprises until she met Brittany.)

After what must be several moments, Santana breaks the kiss, pulling back from Brittany's face, but still keeping her hand at Brittany's jaw, gentling the both of them. She opens her eyes to find Brittany flushed and wild, looking like she did when Santana straddled her in the woods.

"'On the lips,'" Santana explains, anticipating Brittany's question before Brittany can ask it. When Brittany quirks an eyebrow, not quite sure what Santana means, Santana elaborates, "In the woods, you told me I had to kiss you on the lips, so I did."

Recognition lights Brittany's face, and a dopey grin blooms at the corners of Brittany's mouth. At her expression, a surge of adoration swells in Santana's breast. She adds one last peck to Brittany's lips for good measure before her hands slip down to link around Brittany's waist. Brittany mirrors her motion so that she and Santana stand flush against each other, swaying on the spot, as if rocked by the wind.

"You can kiss me like that whenever you want," Brittany says artlessly.

Santana wears her Brittany smile. "Okay," she agrees.

After another moment, the girls peel apart, and Santana takes the two kerchiefs Brittany had held for them, arranging the lighter lavender-colored one over Brittany's hair, folding it carefully into a veil, before fitting the darker purple-colored one over her own head and allowing Brittany to do the same for her in reverse. Brittany offers Santana a small cut of clover flower and keeps a second one for herself.

"We look swell," Brittany says brightly.

"You do," Santana tells her, giving Brittany's knuckles a kiss.

Brittany meets Santana with a queer, soft look, like she has a guess about Santana but doesn't dare to hazard it. She links their pinky fingers together, snug.

(It doesn't feel like a bad omen day at all.)

* * *

><p>It is a bad omen day.<p>

Everything goes well through the knight sketch and the grand parade, but then it comes time for the Flying Dragon Changs to mount the trapeze, and the whole show turns wrong.

The male acrobat grabs his swing to sail out over the floor, taking a great leap to situate his body upon the bar. But just as his feet leave the safety of the platform, the lights in the big top flicker and then go dark.

Everything under the tent turns to black in an instant.

Immediately, a great scream goes up from the crowd, and even Santana standing at her usual tent aperture lets out a startled yelp. She immediately fears for the male acrobat, her stomach wrenching in a knot as she imagines his fate. The children playing in the dirt behind her look up, confused at the commotion, and crane their necks to see inside the big top. Santana hears the circus audience shrieking and groaning.

"What's going on?" someone shouts from the backstage area.

She envisions busted bones and pandemonium, and the same coroner who came to take her grandmother's body away from the bachelor cottage somehow arriving at the circus, though it's nowhere near New York, bringing his neat little leather bag with him.

(She blanches.)

The other company members in the backstage area start to stir and crowd behind her, curious, all jostling to see through the hole at the back of the big top.

A weird buzzing noise pervades the air.

And then.

The big top lights again.

The audience shrieks like it did before, and someone shouts a crass word, but Santana pays no mind, too caught up in checking on the acrobat to heed anything else. She scans the floor first and then the air, and when her eyes finally find him, she gasps.

He sways, suspended from his bar by his left armpit, the rest of his body dangling out in space like grotesque, human mistletoe hanging down from a door lintel. Though he faces away from Santana, she catches a glimpse of his expression while he swings; pain contorts his mouth and brow into a hard grimace, screwing up his features so that he almost seems angry. He caught the trapeze bar by his arm rather than his hand. His every marbled muscle flexes, rigid. It clearly takes all his strength to cling to the trapeze bar and keep from falling from the swing to the ground fifty feet below.

The rest of the audience sees the acrobat at the same time as Santana does. Ladies scream, men curse, and everything feels too much, too fast. People pour from the bleachers onto the circus floor, leaping the partitions at the same time as Ken and a half-dozen supes storm through the back flaps of the big top, beating the crowd back with a flurry of arms and what look like willow switches of the same sort one would use to drive livestock from one pen to another.

Santana doesn't know where to go or how to move. She remains frozen at the aperture, still staring at the acrobat, her heart pounding somewhere high in her throat.

(Though Santana doesn't know the acrobat by anything more than his looks, she couldn't stand it if she were to see him fall.)

With Ken and his men so embroiled in their efforts to control the rioting crowd, Santana wonders if anyone will do anything to help the male acrobat. Anxiety flutters in her chest as she watches him strain to keep his arm clamped over the bar. She wants to shout for someone to fetch a ladder, but she knows that no one will hear her do it, even if she uses her loudest voice.

Just then, something moves at the same height as the male acrobat.

Santana gasps as a swing swoops away from the second platform, this one with the older female acrobat—the one who is either the male acrobat's sister or his wife—hanging from it by both hands, just as she normally does during the first pass of her act.

Whereas the female acrobat would typically release the trapeze bar just as she reached the apex of her swing, now she allows herself to go through the full range of the swing's motion, passing back and forth like the pendulum on a grandfather clock until she finally slows to a halt, stilling alongside the other stranded Chang after several moments.

Santana watches, transfixed, as the female acrobat extends an arm to the male acrobat, coaxing him to reach for her from where he hangs. He does so, wincing, wrapping his right arm around her shoulders. Once he has a secure hold, the female acrobat guides him to slide his legs around her waist, as if he were a great sleepy child whom she meant to carry to bed.

Though the male acrobat is both much taller and much more massive than the female one, she holds him sure, waiting until he has a firm grip on her before she urges him to release his own trapeze bar, transferring his wounded arm to embrace her around the back.

In her nearly nineteen years, Santana has never seen such a feat of strength.

The woman supports the man, though he must weigh almost double what she does, her body perfectly still as he envelops her from all sides. She steadies her grip against the bar, and then, very tenderly, tilts her head down to press a kiss to the side of her partner's face. She whispers something in his ear.

(It's such a familiar motion.)

(Even just watching it feels like so many different things.)

After the female acrobat retracts from her kiss, she starts to rock her hips back and forth, building momentum to move the swing. It isn't until the male acrobat begins to swivel his hips as well that the trapeze actually budges, though.

With the circus floor still in chaos, the Flying Dragon Changs of Peking gain in altitude and motion until they finally hit an arc high enough to bring them back toward the platform where the youngest acrobat waits for them, ready to catch her cohorts up and pilot them to safety. Santana doesn't breathe until all three acrobats stand firmly on deck, the women huddling around their man, checking the extent of his injuries.

Santana wants to applaud them and cheer, but she doesn't have the chance before someone grabs her elbow.

"You all right, ladybird?"

Puck stands at her shoulder, his gypsy gear already packed and slung over his back. He glances between Santana and the aperture in the tent, reading the concern on her face. His eyes find the Changs high on their platform.

Without looking away from them, he says, "Don't worry. Mr. Adams spares no expense when he hires docs to take care of his boys. He only buys the best—you ought to know that, ladybird, what with your pa fixing up my leg and all." Puck offers Santana small smile. "Chang'll be okay."

"What about the circus?" Santana blurts out before she can stop herself.

Puck shrugs. "We'll be one-hundred miles away from here by tomorrow. No one in the next town will give a damn about what happened in Storm Lake—they won't even know about it. We'll put on another show. It'll be okay, ladybird."

(Santana doesn't know if she either loves or hates the fact that the circus never slows down or stops for anything.)

(Somehow she feels swept away in it.)

(Breathless.)

Santana glances up at the sky to find the white saucer moon full over the scorched horizon. Though she hadn't known what to think about the moon at breakfast, now she knows exactly what she thinks.

_Es un mal presagio, Santana._

* * *

><p>She shivers where she stands.<p>

Despite what Puck says, the circus isn't okay—not really, anyway.

Mr. Adams' pocketbook takes a hit to the price of $1200 after he dispenses refunds to every single member of the evening audience. It takes another hit to the price of $150 when Mr. Adams hires the best physician in Storm Lake to set the male acrobat's shoulder bones and another $50 after that when Mr. Adams must provide the physician with the proper incentive to do work on a "yellow China man."

Ken says that both the copper wires connected to the big top's steam generator and the glass on the arc lamps melted due to the high temperature—that's why the power went out—but most people in the company seem to blame the bad news moon for the catastrophe and grumble about how the evening show was doomed right from the start.

The company agrees that the male acrobat was lucky, given the circumstances. He's lucky, they say, even on such a night as this one, with so much hocus pocus about it.

For her part, Santana wonders how a person can both be lucky and have bad things happen to him all at once.

(When she considers her own secret, unbounded thankfulness that the lights went out during the acrobat routine rather than during the knife throwing act, she knows she ought to feel ashamed of herself.)

(She doesn't.)

* * *

><p>Santana will say one thing to defend the full moon: Brittany looks so beautiful under its light.<p>

Following the show, Santana waits at the end of the family tent row while the rest of the company treks to the mess pit for supper. Eagerness titters in her heart as she watches for Brittany to emerge from the Pierce's tent.

After not too long, canvas rustles and Brittany appears upon the grass, already changed back from her circus costume into her blue sundress. Moonbeams weave strands of silver through Brittany's hair and bathe her skin in lustrous white, and a backdrop of ink blue and diamonds fans out behind her. Santana can't quite reason out how Brittany seems more beautiful at their every meeting, but she doesn't mind not knowing.

(Sometimes mysteries are beautiful just in themselves, she supposes.)

With the setting of the sun, the air has cooled considerably and the earth with it, though the night still feels abundantly warm—at least as much so as a usual summer afternoon. The moon shines bright over the circus, so great and luminous that it renders every detail on Brittany's face visible to Santana, right down to the blue of her eyes.

Brittany treads lightly over the grass, and when she reaches Santana, she stands up on tiptoe to press a kiss at the top of Santana's head.

"I had to put Daddy to bed for the night," Brittany explains. She shoots a glance over her shoulder, back toward the midway. "It's been a long time since we only put on one and a half circuses on a traveling day," she says, totally serious.

"It scared me tonight, when the lights went out," Santana confesses.

Brittany nods. "Me, too," she agrees.

(Just then, it occurs to Santana that one week ago, she had no one to whom she could admit her fears. It also occurs to her what a great thing it is to have a person in her life—to have Brittany—who will not only listen to her fears but will also never fault her for having them.)

(What a great thing it is to have a person—Brittany—to love her back.)

Brittany and Santana walk to the mess pit, pinky-fingers linked together and arms swinging between them. When Ma Jones sees them step up to the serving table to get their plates, she shoots them a very stern look, warning the girls without words that they oughtn't to try to get themselves any beer or cider or she'll wring them out for it.

Despite the fact that Misters Adams and Fabray declared that the company should make themselves merry tonight and celebrate Arthur and Quinn's engagement, most of the circus folk seem subdued or even in a foul mood, given the outcome of tonight's show, with the major exception being Puck and his friends, who revel in the "gift" that Mr. Adams bought for them, filling cup after tin cup with spirits, almost to the neglect of their food.

Though Santana would never say as much aloud, inwardly, she must admit that she does wonder what beer and cider taste like and how they affect one's thinking, watching the boys drink.

Santana's father occasionally enjoyed hard liquors with his physician friends and said that drinking brandy, bourbon, and scotch would avail the constitution of any gentleman who imbibed such drinks in moderation. However, Santana's grandmother was an _abstemia_ and would take no drink save for milk or water and who forbade Santana from partaking of alcohol, as well. Although the old woman had not set foot in Catholic church for many years since moving from San Juan to America, she clung to an old pamphlet, written in Spanish, that the padre at her former parish had given to her, which decried the evils of alcohol.

_"Esto convierte a los hombres en tontos, Santana,"_ she said firmly, settling the matter.

(Now Santana wonders if alcohol would have the same effect on a gypsy girl as it would a man, if she were to drink it.)

Santana must watch the boys throw back their cups with a bit too much interest because, eventually, Sam seems to notice Santana's attention on him and looks down from his bench to where she and Brittany sit upon the ground, quirking a curious eyebrow at her.

"Would you ladies like me to get you some cups?" he asks, gesturing to the kegs lined up alongside the chuck wagon.

Brittany shakes her head. "You'd better not," she says flatly.

Sam's brow furrows in confusion. "Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, I think Ma Jones might never feed you supper again, if you did—," Brittany starts.

"—and, for another, I think Mrs. Schuester might murder you," Santana finishes.

For a second, Sam looks genuinely concerned, but then the corners of his mouth turn up into a knowing smirk. He chuckles. "All right," he says, "what did you two do now?"

Brittany answers without blinking: "We robbed a bank while we were in town today."

"And then we held up a stagecoach like Mr. Jesse James," Santana adds.

Sam's smile turns goofy, and he shakes his head, feigning that he can't believe Brittany and Santana's nerve. "Now I know that last part isn't true," he says, "because if it were, Kenny would have already locked both of you in the lion cage by now."

"You don't know that. We could have escaped," Brittany says seriously.

Santana decides to confess their real crime: "Mrs. Schuester gave Britt and me some sewing to do, and we didn't finish it before the shows, so she and Ken said that we couldn't have any beer or cider to drink with our supper tonight."

Sam's jaw drops and his eyes turn wide. "They don't have the right!" he says, perhaps a bit too loudly, pounding his tin cup down upon the tabletop so that some of his cider sloshes over the side of it. "Mr. Adams got that stuff to celebrate Arthur's engagement! He said it was for everyone."

(Santana would almost laugh at Sam's level of consternation, except that she can't help but find it so very, very kind.)

"It's all right," she says automatically. "I've never even tasted beer or cider anyway, so I don't even know what I'm missing."

If Sam seemed shocked before, he now appears positively flabbergasted. "You've never tasted beer or cider at all?" he asks. Sam reaches across the table to nudge Puck into the conversation. "Noah, did you know your wife has never tasted beer or cider before?" he says loudly.

Puck screws up his face. "She hasn't?" he says, glancing at Santana seated on the ground. His lips twist into his devil smirk. "Well, if she hasn't tasted beer, how can she ever know that God loves her?"

Sam chuckles, "I wondered the same thing!"

(It must be some joke that Santana doesn't understand.)

Santana glances away from the boys, suddenly immensely nervous, and reaches out for Brittany's hand upon the grass without thinking before she does so. "It's all right," she says again. "I'm not even sure if I'd like it all that much, really."

"Well, do you like wine?" Sam asks.

Santana hesitates to tell the truth, knowing that if she does so, the boys will likely only shout even more and even louder than they have so far. "I—I've never drunk wine before, either," she admits in a small voice.

Just as Santana expected, at her word, Puck curses loudly, and Sam nearly falls off his bench in astonishment. Santana shuffles where she sits, wanting for words, but before she can think up any to say, Brittany's hand wraps around her wrist.

"It doesn't matter if Santana's never had wine or beer or cider before," Brittany says firmly, "because she and I aren't supposed to drink anything but water tonight anyway."

"Says who? Bullshit!" Puck shouts, waving Brittany's assertion away as if it were a pesky swarm of gnats. He smacks the boy sitting across to him—Rory—meanly on shoulder with the back of his knuckles. "Waiter, go get my wife some beer!" he says, offering up his own empty tin cup as a receptacle.

Rory blinks in confusion, not having followed the conversation to this point.

"Puck, no!" Brittany says. "We're being punished for not doing our chores earlier! Mrs. Schuester and Ken said that Santana and I can't have any beer or cider to drink with our supper, and Ma Jones will probably hogtie anyone who tries to sneak it to us!"

Puck frowns. "Well, why'd you go and skive off on your chores, ladybird?" he says, clearly annoyed that he won't enjoy the opportunity to introduce Santana to the pleasures of drinking alcohol tonight.

Sam interjects. "Doesn't matter," he says.

"Try telling that to Theresa Schuester," Puck says sourly.

Sam rolls his eyes and ducks his head down, gesturing for Puck, Rory, Santana, and Brittany to all lean in closer to him, which they do. "Doesn't matter," he repeats, this time in a serious whisper, "because we're going to get Santana and Brittany a little something to drink tonight anyway, never mind what Mrs. Schuester and Ken have to say about it."

"Hey, what's going on?"

At first, Santana worries that someone in authority may have noticed Sam's clandestine conference, but when she looks up to find the source of the question, she sees that it's only Finn Hudson, seated at the end of the table, with Blaine the trilby tramp and Kurt the juggler at his elbows. Finn, Blaine, and Kurt peer interestedly at the patchwork colloquium before them.

"They're up to something," Kurt observes, taking in the five guilty faces staring up at him, using his fork to gesture at Puck, Rory, Sam, Brittany, and Santana as a group.

(Until now, Santana had never heard Kurt speak.)

(The height and shrillness of his voice surprises Santana very much.)

Sam flusters under Finn, Kurt, and Blaine's attention, but Puck just rolls his eyes and waves them over to join the conversation.

* * *

><p>By the time they finish their supper, the group has a plan.<p>

They'll meet after midnight. Puck and Santana will stay in their tent while the other boys steal the spirits. Kurt volunteers to keep a lookout while Sam, Finn, Rory, and Blaine sneak into the mess pit to rustle up whatever full kegs they can find at the back of the chuck. Finn offers to bring a wheelbarrow to help them move the goods, and Blaine donates a length of rope to tie the kegs down in the wheelbarrow so they don't roll around in transit.

Following the heist, Puck and Santana will rendezvous with the others, and then they'll have only to retrieve Brittany from the Pierce tent for the night. The boys elect Santana as the fittest person to do that job, noting that she is not only the smallest and also the lightest on her feet amongst their number, and also that Mr. Pierce would probably take less unkindly to finding Santana crouched at his daughter's bedside than he would to finding Sam or Puck or Finn in the same position.

Though Puck says that their band of merry thieves ought to make the most of what they have and drink the kegs dry once they pilfer them, Sam thinks it better to drink in moderation and return the rest of the stores to the mess pit before the gang goes to sleep. For the most part, the others agree with him.

("Ma Jones will appreciate that," Brittany says knowingly.)

Of course, Santana protests that the group really oughtn't to break so many rules, and particularly not when she and Brittany have already so displeased Ken and Mrs. Schuester and Mr. Pierce earlier in the day, but the boys seem to have made up their minds about everything and won't heed Santana's concerns.

"Don't worry so much, ladybird," Puck admonishes her. "If anything goes wrong, I'll take the punishment on my head. I won't let ol' Kenny lay a finger on you."

As everyone finishes eating, the boys synchronize their pocket watches and wish each other luck. Santana's heart flutters like book pages in the wind, and she suddenly feels hot again, like she did before the sun set. Brittany's hand moves against Santana's wrist.

"Come put these plates away with me, darlin'?" Brittany says, taking up her and Santana's dirty dishes and nodding toward the chuck. A knowing something glints in her eyes under the moonlight. "I'll bring her right back," Brittany promises Puck, who responds to both Brittany's statement and Santana's exit with naught but a disinterested grunt.

As soon as Brittany and Santana step out of earshot from the table, Brittany offers Santana a sympathetic pout.

"I can take one of those plates," Santana says lamely, reaching over to lighten Brittany's load, but Brittany dodges Santana's proffered help and pouts her lip out further.

"Are you okay?" she asks. "Because we don't have to go along with their plan, if you don't want to. You could pretend you couldn't find me when you went looking inside my tent because maybe I went out sleepwalking or something or maybe you could just fall asleep in my tent with me and forget to go back to the boys. We could just stay inside. Beer and cider don't taste that good anyway. Well, at least beer doesn't."

Santana smiles in spite of her nerves, allowing herself to imagine, for the briefest instant, what it might be like to fall asleep with Brittany in Brittany's bed, with Brittany's body curled around her, warm, soft, and dreaming.

(But then she imagines what Mr. Pierce might say upon discovering her and Brittany together in the morning and shudders.)

"I think if anybody finds out about this, Ken will let the lions have me for breakfast," Santana replies, only mostly joking.

Brittany offers her a sweet, lopsided smile. "No, he wouldn't," she says seriously. "You'd never fill them up, and they'd be hungry all day. He hates it when they yowl on the train."

Santana laughs. "Oh, that makes me feel much better, then."

"It should," Brittany says smugly just as she and Santana round the corner of the chuck. "You're way too tiny to make good lion chow—"

"I know you're planning something fell."

Rachel Berry stands between Brittany and Santana and the washtubs, arms folded over her chest and expression impossibly stern. Under the bright moonlight, Santana sees the brown in Rachel's eyes, as well as the consternated crease in her brow.

(A few feet away, Ma Jones' girls look up from their work at the washtubs, interested, and watch the confrontation before them as if it were a play.)

"Oh, no, see, don't worry, nobody was really going to feed Santana to the lions. We were just talking about how—," Brittany starts to cover.

"I'm not stupid," Rachel says firmly, still rooted to her spot. "I know you're planning something—you and Puck and Sam and Finn—and I know that you mean mischief."

"Oh, you mean at the table?" Brittany says, playing daffy. "No, Puck was just telling us one of his saloon jokes, and he didn't want Ma Jones to overhear because she doesn't like cussing in her kitchen so—"

"You know, I don't expect Santana to care much about this circus, being so new to it and all," Rachel says, talking over the top of Brittany words, "but I would have thought that you might care, Brittany. After the loss we took today, Mr. Adams can't afford to deal with any more problems! You should know that!"

A real desperation rings through Rachel's words, and, with it, Santana realizes that Rachel doesn't just speak for the sake of being contrary but rather because she actually feels worried.

(Rachel Berry is the girl who cares too much about everything.)

(Santana knows just the type.)

Rachel goes on, "And you can't keep skipping out on your work and playing games, either! We all have jobs to do around camp. You never used to get in so much trouble, Brittany, but ever since you've befriended Santana, it seems like you don't do anything but cross Mrs. Schuester and leave your father alone when he needs your help! What would your mother think if she—?"

With Rachel's every new word, Santana's heartbeat grows louder in her ears, and guilt gnaws at her stomach because Rachel is right, Santana knows that she is—Santana and Brittany do get into more than their fair share of trouble around camp, and they break all sorts of rules together.

Even so, when Rachel says the part about Brittany's mother and Brittany draws a startled breath—of the same sort that she might draw if someone were to suddenly slap her—Santana doesn't feel apt to agree with what Rachel says at all, no matter how right Rachel may be concerning everything else. Santana's guilt turns to something sharp and ironclad, hardening in the pit of her belly.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Santana snaps. "There's a reason why you don't have any friends around here, and it's because you boss everyone who might be your friend away and make everything your business, even when it's not. Maybe if you learned to shut your giant, freak show-mouth every once in a while and stopped making such a pest of yourself, people would invite you to tell jokes or play games or plan things with them for a change, and I wouldn't have more friends than you do, even though I've only been here a week."

A chorus of _ooh_'s goes up from Ma Jones' girls, seated along the edges of the washtubs, and one of them even bangs her hand against the side of the tub in surprise, clanging it like a cymbal.

To her credit, Rachel doesn't cry, and her eyes don't even well with tears. She swallows once, hard, and grimaces, regaining her composure.

After several seconds of silence, she says, in a small, clipped voice, "Please just don't do anything that Mr. Adams will regret in the morning," before turning on her heel and walking away, disappearing into the shadows beyond the mess pit.

(Of course, it had been too long since Santana shouted at someone and made a villain of herself before an audience.)

Brittany has never seen Santana shout at anyone before, not in person, and, for a moment, Santana dreads to think that Brittany might suddenly think less of her because of it. Her heart snags in her chest. Before she checks Brittany's reaction, Santana prepares herself to see shock or disgust.

Instead, she finds Brittany wearing another one of her unreadable expressions, full of so many somethings that Santana hardly knows what to make of them all. This expression seems vaguely gracious but also faraway, wistful, and quietly sad.

"Rachel talks too much sometimes," Brittany says simply, looking off into the darkness.

"She does," Santana agrees.

Santana will despise herself for savaging Rachel again at some later point, but, at the moment, she can't find it in her to care about anything except the way the Brittany leads her along to the washtubs, depositing their dirtied dishes there, taking Santana's pinky finger in her own and giving it a little squeeze.

_Thank you for understanding._

(The truth is that Santana would shout at Rachel Berry again in front of the whole circus in a heartbeat, and would even do so a thousand times over, if only it would keep Brittany's precious heart from hurting.)

* * *

><p>Puck tells Santana to sleep as much as she can before midnight and promises that he'll keep watch until it's time for her to wake. Santana doesn't remember falling to sleep, but she must do so because eventually she feels one of Puck's big, rough hands jostling her shoulder, shaking her from dreams that she'll never remember later.<p>

"Come on, ladybird. It's time for us to go have some fun," Puck says.

Santana can't see Puck's face through the tent darkness, but his voice sounds boyish, clearer and more honest than usual. When he opens the tent flaps to let in the moonlight, Santana exhales, hiding her nerves beneath his noise. She doesn't share his enthusiasm for the night's activities, to say the least. She sits on the edge of her cot and removes the bangle bracelets at her wrists and ankle, setting them down on the cloth sling of the bed.

_Haznos silenciosos._

_(Secreto.)_

"Good thinking, ladybird," Puck commends her.

Santana nods, tense.

Getting up to follow Puck outside to the mess, Santana feels a high pitch of nerves ringing through her breast, as if she's caught in that one split instant when the train first starts moving down its morning tracks though her body has yet to realize the motion. Santana washes her face in the steel basin and works her fingers through her hair before following Puck outdoors.

She had forgotten the brightness of the moon while she slept, and part of her wonders if the boys wouldn't have been smarter to plan this heist for a darker night when they could fully conceal themselves in shadow.

As it is, Santana finds that she can see every inch of the circus almost as well as if it were daytime. Silvery light pours out over the white city like the mercury that once bled from one of her father's glass thermometers when she accidentally shattered it upon the floor, playing as a child.

She and Puck meet up with Sam, Finn, Rory, Blaine, and Kurt just beside the small neighborhood of tents bordering the mess pit. The boys already have Finn's wheelbarrow packed and fitted up with two kegs, one presumably filled with cider, the other with beer, and both of them tied down with cotton rope so that they won't jostle even an inch when the wheelbarrow rolls.

Kurt wears what Santana recognizes as his bag of juggler's equipment slung over his shoulder. Momentarily, she wonders why Kurt bothered to bring his gear along on an adventure in thievery, but she doesn't get the chance to ask Kurt or anyone else about his decision before Puck pipes up.

"How did it go?" Puck whispers, though the success of the heist seems obvious, given the spoils.

Sam smiles his goofy smile. "Ken was keeping guard," he says, "almost like he expected us to come, only—"

"—he was drunk and fast asleep," Rory finishes, grinning. He talks with a thick accent that Santana doesn't recognize and almost can't understand.

(Santana hadn't realized that Rory was perhaps less American than herself until he opened his mouth.)

"So he didn't see you?" Puck checks.

"No," Finn says. "He won't even know the barrels are gone."

"We could probably dance a hoedown right beside him without him noticing it," Blaine smirks.

"Good," Puck says, pleased with his friends' work and also their good fortune.

Santana feels less enthused for the boys' success. As she sees it, something about this plan must unavoidably go wrong, and if it wasn't the boys' heist, then it will surely be her own adventures in whisking Brittany out of her family tent in the dead of night. After all, Santana so seldom enjoys good luck; Mr. Pierce will undoubtedly wake, and then he'll skin Santana alive or—worse yet—do something to punish Brittany for making mischief with the little gypsy girl.

"Let's go get Britt," Sam says happily, gesturing for the party to follow him back toward the neighborhood with the family tents.

"Get ready to make like a cat, ladybird," Puck counsels Santana. "You've got to be light on your feet and move quick. No dawdling, and keep quiet. We'll all wait outside for you. If something goes sour, just holler, and we'll come get you."

Despite Puck's assurance that the boys will protect her should something go wrong, Santana still feels nauseous as she imagines what might happen should she make a mistake. One misstep on her part could end this night in a brawl between her fake husband and Brittany's mountain man father—the latter of whom carries a Bowie knife at his belt—and ultimately lead to her or Brittany's or everyone's dismissal from the circus.

(Santana shudders.)

Stepping up to the Pierce's door, Santana realizes that she's never actually seen the inside of Brittany's tent and so doesn't know the layout of it. What if she blunders into Mr. Pierce's bed by mistake or knocks something over in the dark? Any clumsiness on her part tonight could awaken not just Brittany and her father but also everyone else in the whole circus in an instant.

"All right," Sam breathes, reaching forward to peel back the tent flaps.

Santana flinches and grabs his wrist. "No!" she hisses, perhaps a bit more loudly than she had intended to do.

Everyone cringes all at once, halting where they stand, and, for a full minute, no one dares to move or breathe. Only after Santana's voice fades from the air does everyone shift again and Sam speak.

"What?" he asks, fixing Santana with a concerned look.

"Don't open the tent flaps," Santana whispers, much more quiet than before. "You'll let moonlight inside the tent and wake Mr. Pierce."

Understanding dawns upon Sam's face, and he moves his hand away from the canvas doors quickly, as if they were a dog about to bite his fingers. Sam draws back, showing Santana that he won't move again unless she instructs him to do so. The other boys wait alongside him, all of them looking to Santana, silently questioning her as to how she intends to get inside the tent, if not through its doors.

If Santana didn't feel so impossibly nervous, she might smile in response.

Her answer to their unspoken query is a simple one.

_Circus magic._

Without a word, Santana drops to her knees and lies down on her belly. The boys watch her in wonderment, and she even hears Puck breathe out a blasphemy in surprise. Santana tries her best to ignore her audience, focusing instead on steeling herself to perform her trick—one she learned just less than one week ago on a day when she sat inside her own tent, sewing felt knight shifts together with red string.

Santana crawls forward along the grass by her elbows until she reaches the place where the tent canvas rests upon the ground. Drawing a quick breath—her heart beats in syncopation—she slithers into the tent from the outside, crawling under the wall in one sleek, musteline motion.

The tent canvas weighs heavier than Santana had imagined that it would, but, all the same, after just a split instant, Santana emerges into the Pierce's tent as a diver would emerge from beneath a cresting wave back to breathable air.

No moonlight permeates the inside of the tent. Everything is black and deep, almost as if it were in the depths of Solomon's Mines. Santana hears breath and sees shadows, at first formless but then in some detail.

For a long while, she remains motionless, waiting for her eyesight to return to her. Her heartbeat never stops its syncopation. If Brittany and her father were awake, they would surely hear the fear pulsing, hard, beneath Santana's skin. Heat latent in the earth seeps into Santana's palms and knees and bugs hop through the grass around her wrists and against her skirt. Gradually, she begins to discern the landscape of the space before her.

While Santana's own tent only runs about eight feet in length, four feet in breadth, and stands just a little bit taller than Puck in height, the Pierce's tent must be nearly twelve feet by ten feet in dimension and stretches at least tall enough for Mr. Pierce to stand up straight at the apex of it, perhaps even on his tiptoes.

Just beyond the small "foyer" where Santana crouches, a thin cloth partition runs down the center of the tent along the main frame almost like a shower curtain, dividing the tent into two "rooms." Beyond the two rooms exists another foyer at the back of the tent, filled up with large, murky shadows, the exact shapes of which Santana can't discern through the dark.

(Mr. Pierce's backboard for the knife throwing act, maybe, along with some other furniture.)

From her place on the ground, Santana can see that each room houses a cot and a toilette set perched on a modest end table. She can also see that each cot supports a sleeping person. Her heartbeat speeds in her breast.

Santana takes a long while deciding which cot belongs to Brittany, tracing out the shapes of the two sleeping people carefully, over and over again, and listening to their breathing until she feels certain that Brittany sleeps on the cot to her left and Mr. Pierce on the cot to her right. Only a few feet of space and a cloth partition separate the girl Santana means to wake from the girl's very dangerous father, and Santana feels helpless in the darkness considering the situation.

Of course, it would be foolish for Santana to stand.

From a crouching position, she'll be less likely to run into anything when she moves. She'll also be less visible, should Mr. Pierce open his eyes to search the room. The lower Santana remains to the ground, the better off she'll be.

So she crawls.

Only about four or five feet of space separate Santana from Brittany's bedside, but it may as well be all the distance that Santana has traveled with the circus since leaving New York City, considering her trepidation in traversing it.

Santana crawls forward at a molasses pace, pausing at every loud breath and motion. When a moth flutters against Santana's cheek, her heart all but stops in her chest. When Mr. Pierce sighs in his sleep, she nearly dies upon the grass.

After maybe ten minutes or perhaps forever, Santana arrives at Brittany's bedside. Vaguely, she wonders if the boys outside have started to fret because she hasn't emerged from the tent yet, but even in so wondering, she can't force herself to rush—not with so much at stake.

(Not when Brittany's sleeping.)

Santana rests her fingertips at the edge of Brittany's cot and shifts into a kneeling position, hovering just above Brittany though she takes care not to touch Brittany just yet. Through the darkness, Santana can hear Brittany's breathing and feel the life in her, the warmth and the gentle being of it. She senses Brittany's shape, Brittany's graceful falls and curves, and a vast sense of knowing fills her.

With the greatest reverence, Santana shifts so that she can see Brittany's face through the darkness. Santana had, of course, expected to find Brittany beautiful cloaked in shadow. All the same, Santana lets out a little astonished gasp at finding Brittany so fiercely beautiful, even without light.

(Brittany is the best surprise.)

Brittany's hair fans out across her pillow as if she were a heroine enthroned in one of Mr. Waterhouse's portraits, and her body flows like a river down the cot, angled here at her shoulders and there at her hips in wending turns and traces. She wears a blank expression, her lips slightly parted, and sleeps with one hand pressed over her heart, the other half-open at her side, easy.

The gloom brings out the blanche in Brittany's skin and the soft peace in her sleeping features, but even more than that it, brings out _something_ in Santana—and particularly when Santana sees what Brittany holds in her half-opened hand as she sleeps.

Trefoil.

In the darkness, the flower appears much less pink and much more wilted than it did tucked into Brittany's sash at the matinee show. Even so, Santana recognizes the favor at once, as much by the way that Brittany cradles it like a good luck charm in her hand as by the delicacy of its dragon-faced petals.

(Santana Lopez isn't the only girl at the circus with flipped copper pennies, pulled strings, so many low, sweet _somethings_.)

When Santana recognizes the flower, her heart turns in her chest, tumbling over with that same falling feeling that sometimes suddenly awakens her when she's just begun to dream. It's giddy and wonderful and overwhelming, so much so that Santana almost startles for it.

She hadn't imagined that she could somehow love Brittany more than she already did.

All at once, Santana knows exactly why Mr. Perrault's princes so often deign to kiss sleeping maidens. Still, Santana hesitates to kiss Brittany while Brittany sleeps, remembering how much it panicked her to awaken to Puck's kisses on her second day at the circus. She doesn't want to jolt Brittany or cause Brittany to cry out, and neither does she want to kiss Brittany if Brittany doesn't want to kiss her back.

(She's never felt as careful about anything as she does about Brittany.)

Santana lingers just above Brittany's face, so close that she can feel Brittany's eyelids flutter as Brittany dreams. Slowly, Santana reaches up from the edge of the cot and strokes her thumb along Brittany's jaw.

_Brittany_, she breathes, voiceless, her lips not quite touching Brittany's skin.

Brittany's eyes open to the dark.

"San—?" she starts.

Santana doesn't allow Brittany to finish the name.

Instead, Santana hushes Brittany with another stroke to Brittany's jaw, this one bidding Brittany to move to her. In silence, Santana coaxes Brittany's lips against her own, holding still so as not to give Brittany a fright and also so as to allow Brittany to find the kiss for herself, inviting Brittany to take the lead, which is something that Brittany does readily and with remarkable quickness, catching Santana's bottom lip between her own before fully fitting their mouths together.

Brittany's tongue slips against Santana's, and, all of a sudden, this may just be Santana's favorite kiss that she and Brittany have shared to date—so sleepy, artless, and sloppy. It's a new sensation to Santana, kissing Brittany in such fathomless darkness, not being able to see anything, only to hear and to feel and to know. Brittany shifts, and Santana follows her, helpless. Brittany shifts again and Santana falls even more deeply in love.

She could stay in the darkness kissing a dreamy Brittany forever.

Except.

Brittany lets out a pitched sigh against Santana's lips, and Santana turns rigid.

They're not alone.

Mr. Pierce could awaken at any instant—and especially if Brittany and Santana make noises in the dark. Never mind what the boys say about Mr. Pierce taking less unkindly to finding Santana hovered at his daughter's bedside than one of them; Mr. Pierce would hate the girl kissing his daughter awake, if he were to see her. Santana's heartbeat speeds, thumping hard against her breastbone, as she imagines every possible poor outcome to her adventure in the Pierce's tent.

Brittany notices Santana's new caution; she stills against Santana's lips.

Slowly, soundlessly, she and Santana break apart.

Though it's too dark inside the tent to see colors or deep relief, the girls find each other's eyes and check each other, recalling their plan to each other without words. Brittany nods, signaling to Santana that she's fully awake now, and Santana offers Brittany a hand, helping her to sit up off the bed. Brittany sets the trefoil down on the end table beside her cot, wearing a bashful look as Santana watches her do it.

For a full minute, Brittany and Santana wait, receding into the stillness of the night and hoping that Brittany's father hasn't noticed their small rustlings. They listen for the steady rhythm of Mr. Pierce's breathing, counting it out as though his every exhalation were one his daggers finding the backboard during the act.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

_Four._

_Five._

_Six._

They're safe.

Brittany moves like liquid, melting from her cot to the grass beside Santana in a single, deft motion. Once she steadies herself on the ground, Brittany smiles at Santana through the blackness and leans in to press a peck to Santana's cheek, misaiming to kiss Santana's eyebrow instead. Santana must make a silly face at Brittany's mistake because Brittany's expression all but brims over with adoration for it, and, in the next second, Brittany leans in again, kissing Santana properly—though quickly—on the lips.

(Santana wants to spend every night kissing Brittany to sleep and every morning kissing Brittany awake for more reasons than there are numbers.)

Brittany pulls back, still wearing her soppy, adoring smile. She gestures toward the door and nods, indicating that she and Santana ought to make their exit.

Just then, it occurs to Santana that, so far, nothing has gone wrong with the plan tonight.

(Is there really such thing as good luck kisses?)

* * *

><p>As it turns out, Brittany leaves the tent much more quickly than Santana entered it, making it from her bedside to the door in less than a single minute and moving with such aplomb that Santana can't help but wonder if Brittany hasn't snuck out of bed before in the middle of the night.<p>

Not wanting Brittany to leave her behind, Santana adopts Brittany's swift pace, following at Brittany's ankles.

When the girls reach the canvas tent flaps, Santana doesn't even have to instruct Brittany not to open them, lest she let in the moonlight; Brittany offers Santana a wily look, and, without any formal adieu, she slithers gamely under the door, knowing that Santana won't be long behind her.

(Whoever would have thought that quiet, well-behaved Santana from the bachelor cottage would fall in love with Brittany, the bravest, most adventuresome girl in the entire world?)

Puck takes Santana under the arm the instant she emerges from the tent and drags her roughly to her feet. To Santana's side, Brittany stands near Sam, both of them looking pink-cheeked and eager. For the most part, the boys seem glad to see Brittany and Santana well and safely returned after their adventure inside the Pierce's tent, but Puck wears a cross expression.

"We thought you'd forgotten that the party's out here, not in there," he hisses at Santana, dusting her skirt of stray grass with the backs of his knuckles.

Santana flinches, not sure of what to say. She can't explain the reason for her delay to Puck—not now or ever, really. Her mouth hangs open.

"Sorry," Brittany apologizes, though Puck hadn't addressed her.

"Shh," Kurt reminds them, sharp.

"Let's just go so that we can drink some beer," Sam mouths.

Santana had almost forgotten the full object of their plan.

The truth is that Santana dreads to drink alcohol more than she even dreaded to steal it. Santana knows from her grandmother's Spanish pamphlet that alcohol lowers one's inhibitions, encourages licentious behavior, and loosens the tongue—and to the girl with secrets already threatening to spill from her lips at every passing moment, that last prospect in particular seems especially worrisome.

Santana already has to check herself from blurting out her love for Brittany every time Brittany smiles at her or calls her "darlin'" or looks particularly sweet; she can only imagine how difficult it will be to mind her words after she's tasted some beer and cider and given herself over to strong drink.

Of course, it's not that Santana doesn't want to confess her love to Brittany—she just doesn't want to do so in a drunken rush, and especially not with Puck, Sam, Finn, Kurt, Rory, and Blaine all listening in when she does so.

If Santana is going to tell Brittany the truth, she wants it to be in the perfect moment and with the perfect words.

Brittany is Santana's most special thing, after all.

* * *

><p>Their small rabble of thieves escapes the white city without incident and makes it safely beyond the tree line, stopping upon the shores of Storm Lake, where they decide to stage their revelries. With no one around to hear them, the boys take to whooping and crowing, celebrating their successful larceny with a special kind of rapscallion abandon.<p>

"This is the tops!" Finn shouts, stooping over to scoop up a handful of beach sand, which he promptly throws in Puck's eyes.

Puck snarls "Watch it, jackass!" and retaliates by shoving Finn harshly into Rory, elbowing Finn with such force that Santana hears him do it, even from several feet away.

Both Finn and Rory topple over, but Blaine immediately rears up to avenge them, tackling Puck around the waist so that they both hit the ground, too. After a few more yelps and thrown punches, Sam also somehow enters the brawl. Amongst the boys, only Kurt hangs back, squeaking and dodging out of the way when the other wrestlers try to drag him into their fracas.

For their parts, Brittany and Santana take to watching the boys as they tussle, marveling to see all of these alleged friends beating one another so savagely. Eventually, Santana takes a seat upon the sand. She doesn't realize her own quietness until Brittany sits down next to her.

"You know we can talk now, right?" Brittany reminds Santana gently, reaching for Santana's hand and working over the soft space between Santana's thumb and forefinger, rubbing at something below the skin.

The air coming up off the lake smells fishy, though the lake water itself appears dark as ink and entirely clean. Moonlight reflects over the small disturbances along the lake's surface, catching on this ripple and that small wave, and also illuminating the whole beachfront as brightly as if it were afternoon and not already long past midnight. The lake laps gently at its own shoreline, spurred on, Santana knows, by the gravity of the great bad omen hanging in the sky above it.

Santana had never walked on a beach until today and finds that she very much enjoys the feeling of the fine, powdered sand on her skin. She buries her toes in the beach and runs the hand that Brittany doesn't hold through its piles, straining out rocks and odd bits between her fingers, absentminded.

"Abuela would probably send me off to become a nun if she knew what I was doing tonight," Santana says, trying to make a joke, though her voice comes out much too small for it.

Brittany spares Santana a knowing look. "Rachel told me it's not ladylike to drink alcohol," she says, "but sometimes I think that when Rachel tells me things are unladylike, she really just means that they're too much fun."

Santana's brow furrows. "You mean you like drinking alcohol?"

Brittany offers Santana a sheepish shrug and pulls a comic guilty face. "The first time I drank beer, I stole Sam's clown shoes and threw them up a tree, and the Flying Dragon Changs had to climb up there to get them down," she reveals. She frowns. "I actually don't remember too much about that. I've only drank beer twice and cider once, but I like cider heaps. It tastes good and makes everything feel wobbly but in a good way—kind of like dancing without knowing the steps first."

"Does cider taste as good as sarsaparilla?" Santana asks gingerly.

Brittany smiles. "Almost," she replies, and when she laughs, some of the nervousness goes out of Santana.

"I just—," Santana starts but then trails off.

(Santana doesn't know how to tell Brittany that she's afraid to confess her love when neither one of them will remember it clearly and it might just seem like a joke in the moment.)

After Santana stays quiet for a while, Brittany pipes up again.

"We can't have too much to drink tonight anyway," she says wisely, "—not when we have a show tomorrow and not when Sam wants to leave the barrels mostly full so he can return them to _somebody's_ kitchen."

Santana laughs, feeling more at ease by the moment. "That's very true," she says happily, registering that the boys have disengaged from their grappling and begun to set up the kegs upon some handy rocks located a ways back from the lakeshore.

After a few moments and some organized efforts, the boys manage to fit the keg stoppers with spigots and to do so mostly without spilling any beer into the sand.

"Come on over, ladies!" Sam calls, gesturing to the newly outfitted kegs and offering Brittany and Santana his best bow, as though he were a purveyor of some fine merchandise and he wished to attract them as customers to it.

Brittany scrabbles to her feet and offers a hand to Santana. "Hup, hup," she says, helping Santana to stand. A flutter of nerves runs through Santana's body; she tries to remind herself that if she can just manage to mind her tongue, she might actually have some fun tonight.

As the girls sidle up alongside the kegs, Kurt opens the satchel that Santana noticed him carrying earlier in the evening, revealing not juggling equipment but rather over one half-dozen tin cups—enough for every member of their band of thieves to have one for him or herself.

"I took them out of the chuck after supper," he explains, smirking at the group's dumbfounded reaction to his cleverness. "You know what they say: 'An ounce of preparation.'" He giggles, smug as the cat with the prettiest paws.

(Santana can't yet tell whether she likes Kurt or not.)

Instead of thanking Kurt for the cups, Puck smacks Finn hard in the bicep. "Good thing Hummel did your job for you, woodenhead," he says meanly, and Santana recoils.

(The truth is that for as much as Santana sometimes likes the small boy in Puck, she equally dislikes the big man in him.)

The group huddles around the kegs while Sam and Puck fill up cups for everyone, passing them out indiscriminately until it comes time to serve Brittany and Santana. Puck's devil smirk curls his lips as he twists the valve on the spigot, opening it to pour Santana's drink.

"You ready to find out that God loves you, ladybird?" he says gamely, extending her the cup.

Santana rolls her eyes. "He can't love me that much if he stuck me with you," she snaps, surprising herself with her own sharpness.

(The boys let up a chorus of whistles, and Brittany shifts at Santana's side.)

Puck laughs. "You say that now," he says slyly, "but you just wait, ladybird. You'll see."

Santana doesn't know that she will see, though. She can already smell the alcohol from where she stands, and it doesn't appeal to her by its scent at all. Fleetingly, she wonders if Puck will make her drink lots of alcohol, even if she finds that she doesn't like it from the start. She also wonders if the boys will measure their own drinking habits as judiciously as Brittany supposes that they will, never mind the show tomorrow.

Trepidations notwithstanding, Santana accepts the cup that Puck offers to her, wondering if he's given her beer or cider to begin with. Puck and Sam procure themselves cups, last of all. As they do so, Rory and Finn make moves as if to draw their first tastes, though their lips scarcely touch tin before Sam interrupts them.

"Hold up!" Sam says, waving his hand. "We ought to make a toast, considering that this is a special occasion and all."

He smiles his wide, goofy clown grin and raises his own cup in Brittany and Santana's direction. The others boys follow his lead, some of them more grudgingly than others. Sam nods.

"To Ms. Santana," he says brightly, "who is the best gypsy fortuneteller our circus has ever known and who has become such a fast friend to us all, and especially to Miss Brittany. We're so happy to enjoy their most agreeable feminine company here tonight. May they both savor these spirits, though Ken and Mrs. Schuester would keep them from having any! Hear, hear!"

"Hear, hear!" the other boys agree, clinking their tin cups together and nodding their concordance.

"That's very elegant, Sammy," Puck smirks.

For her part, Santana doesn't know quite what to say and feels, for a moment, guilty. Of course, she knows that not everyone gathered on the beachfront likes her quite as well as Sam seems to think they do. All the same, it suddenly strikes her that, just over one week ago, she had no one in the world who cared for her at all, but now she has someone who actually loves her, and at least a few people who, whatever their reasons, seem to like her somewhat, as well. Her throat turns thick, and she bites her lips into her mouth, overcome with quiet, happy gratitude.

Sam makes certain to reach his cup all the way across the circle to tap it against Santana's, and Brittany does the same.

"Drink up!" Blaine says, grinning, and the boys all begin to throw back their ciders and beers.

Santana meets Brittany's eyes and finds them alight with a certain type of lively daring—a catching type which causes Santana herself to feel momentarily brave. The practical part of Santana's mind tells her that one sip of beer or cider won't be enough to make her drunk anyway and that she can drink in moderation without saying anything that she would rather keep secret aloud, if only she remains vigilant.

In a flurry of nerves, Santana draws her own tin cup to her lips and drinks, Brittany mirroring her actions at her side.

The drink—whether it be beer or cider, Santana doesn't yet know—tastes almost exactly how it smells, which is to say overwhelmingly bitter and pungent. The flavor bites at Santana's tongue, and she must make a sour face for it because the boys start to laugh at her almost immediately, and especially when she chokes on some of the drink's foam.

"What do you think, ladybird?" Puck asks, nudging her.

Santana forces herself to swallow. "It's like drinking your aftershave," she complains, and the boys all laugh at her cheek again.

Brittany rolls her eyes at them and offers her own cup to Santana, switching their drinks before Santana can protest her action. "You should have given her cider to drink," Brittany reproves Puck, taking what must be Santana's beer for herself. "Try this instead. You'll like it better."

Brittany's promise rings true.

Whereas beer tastes sour, cider tastes sweet and crisp like apples, the alcohol flavor buried under so many pleasant masks that Santana scarcely notices it. Indeed, Santana finds the cider so agreeable that she allows herself a second sip before attempting to return the drink to its original owner.

Brittany immediately shakes her head. "You keep it," she insists. "I like beer."

(She takes a long pull from Santana's former cup to prove her bluff.)

(Why would Santana ever need a gallant knight when she can have a gallant Brittany instead?)

"Have you learned that God loves you yet, ladybird?" Puck asks, wagging his eyebrows.

"No."

_(But Brittany does.)_

* * *

><p>As the night wears on, Santana wonders when she'll start to feel uninhibited or inclined toward licentious behavior or even sloppy with her words because, so far, she doesn't feel much different from how she usually does—only perhaps just a little bit clumsier, as far as she can tell.<p>

By now, Santana has finished two cups of cider and nurses a third. Brittany takes a seat beside her, sipping from a tin cup of her own.

"You're a very quiet drunk, darlin'," Brittany teases.

Santana smiles. "I don't think I am drunk," she shrugs. "And I'm just quiet because I want to say the right things to you."

(She only trips over just a few of her words.)

Brittany nods and takes a sip from her cider, watching down the beach to where Sam and Blaine turn ungraceful cartwheels in the sand with Puck, Finn, Rory, and Kurt dancing around them like Mr. Defoe's savages on their island.

"I think the boys are drunk," Brittany observes. Then, "I wish that they weren't here right now because I think that you'd talk more if they weren't. You're really pretty, Santana."

Immediately, Santana's face heats, and she shakes her head to hide her blush behind her hair. Her lips buzz, and she suddenly finds that she wants very much for Brittany to kiss her in the same way that Brittany kissed her in the tent.

A minute passes, and Santana knows that she needs to say something, but she can't think of anything to say that isn't just exactly what she means to keep quiet about tonight. She gathers herself against the words threatening to spill from her lips and leans down to rest her cheek upon her kneecap, looking at Brittany from behind her curtain of hair, marveling at the way the backdrop of stars over Brittany's shoulder seems to dance somehow and feeling senseless, without an anchor.

She asks Brittany, "Are you drunk?" very suddenly and without meaning to do it.

(The loudness of her own voice surprises her.)

Brittany shakes her head. "Nope," she says, smiling. "Not yet."

Santana nods, feeling more and more contented the longer she talks to Brittany. She sets her cup down in the sand and wraps her arms around her legs, curling herself into a tighter ball.

"That's good," she says earnestly, "because it would be lonely if one of us were drunk but the other one weren't. I like doing new things with you. I hadn't really done new things until I got to the circus and I met you. Now everything I do with you seems new—even the laundry."

(Has she said too much? She doesn't think so. Not yet.)

Brittany's smile turns queerer than before. She looks like a girl with a secret—which, of course, she is.

"Maybe you're not so quiet," she notes thoughtfully.

(If Santana weren't so dizzy and in love, she would ask Brittany to explain what she means.)

* * *

><p>They try playing hand games again, choosing a much simpler rhyme than the one they practiced on the train into Cherokee.<p>

_Pease porridge hot  
><em>_Pease porridge cold  
><em>_Pease porridge in the pot,  
><em>_nine days old_

Simplification notwithstanding, Santana still only manages to clap Brittany's hand once throughout the whole game, partially on account of her own raucous laughter, and partially because she feels just one half-beat behind everything, no matter how carefully she counts.

"It's because I'm left-handed," she pouts.

"If you say so, darlin'," Brittany teases.

Both girls laugh as Santana swats at Brittany's open palm and misses it spectacularly, nearly falling forward in her attempt to reach it. Everything feels dizzy and wonderful, and Santana's thoughts run close to the surface. She snatches at Brittany's hand again, not bothering to clap it, instead grabbing onto Brittany's wrist, stilling her motion.

"Got it," she says happily, taking Brittany's hand into her lap.

"That's not how the game works," Brittany reminds her, though Brittany couldn't look more pleased to see Santana breaking the rules.

"I have your hand," Santana notes happily.

"You do," Brittany says, her eyes deep with something that seems both familiar and unnamable to Santana all at once.

* * *

><p>After tuckering themselves out performing so many acrobatic tricks, the boys eventually return to sit with Brittany and Santana at the head of the beach, collapsing around them like a litter of sleepy puppies on a mat.<p>

By the time they turn up, Santana sits with her head in Brittany's lap, Brittany stroking through her hair with careful, gentling fingers. Santana feels herself just on the verge of sleep and so, so comfortable. Something hovers on the edge of her consciousness. If she can only remember what it is, she'll be fine.

"We should go bathing," Sam announces, his eyes both bright and dim at the same time.

"But we don't have bathing costumes!" Kurt protests. "No towels or shorts or caleçons."

Sam shrugs. "Does it matter? We've got this whole nice lake to ourselves, and the moon is out, and it's such a warm night. We can swim just as natural as the good Lord made us. It would be a shame if we didn't."

Kurt startles, eyes turning wide. He stammers for a second before seizing onto just one suitable objection to make, though he probably has many objections in mind. "But we're in the company of ladies!" he squeaks, gesturing to Brittany and Santana.

Santana had started to feel calm concerning the evening's activities, but now her heartbeat quickens in her breast. She doesn't like the direction this conversation has taken any more than Kurt does. After some struggling, she sits up from Brittany's lap.

"Kurt's right," she says sharply. "It wouldn't be modest."

"Not if nobody peeks," Puck argues.

Blaine nods approvingly at Puck's words, turning his trilby hat over in his hands. His hair looks much less slick than usual, tussled and messy from all his wrestling on the beach. "You ladies could change out of your clothes with your backs turned to us, and we with our backs turned to you. You could get into the water first, and then we could get into the water after you, and no one would have to see anything untoward," he says mildly.

Sam offers Santana a sympathetic look. "We don't have to if you don't want to," he offers, extending her an out.

Of course, Santana knows exactly what her grandmother would say about Sam's idea—but, then again, Santana also knows exactly what her grandmother would say about so many of the things that she's done since arriving at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie. Santana glances from the boys to the water and finally to Brittany, whom she finds wearing an even expression, waiting patiently to hear her verdict.

"No peeking?" Santana checks with Sam.

"No peeking," he promises.

"And may any man who does peek be struck blind upon the spot," Blaine adds loftily.

"Aye!" the rest of the boys agree, as if Blaine's words were a pirate's oath in _Treasure Island_.

"No peeking," Santana repeats, this time as a command, and the boys all cheer, happy at her decision, though it isn't their reaction Santana most cares to see.

Brittany offers Santana a cat smile and wags her eyebrows at her. "You'd make a terrible nun, darlin'," she whispers.

(Somehow, what she says sounds suspiciously like a compliment.)

* * *

><p>Five minutes later, the boys stand nearly thirty paces removed from Brittany and Santana, so far away down the beachfront from them that the two parties must shout to hear each other. To a one, the boys make a great show of turning their backs to the girls and covering their eyes with their hands, as if their actions were part of a clowning routine.<p>

"Anyone who peeks at my wife better settle up his euchre debts because I'll fix him," Puck threatens, and the rest of the boys make no complaint against his words.

"Give us a shout when you're safe in the water!" Sam instructs. "We won't start changing until you have your eyes covered."

Despite the fact that Santana has had two showers at the circus so far, she still doesn't quite feel accustomed to doffing her clothes out-of-doors, and particularly not when she knows that she has an audience—and such a beautiful, wonderful, interesting audience, in particular. She offers Brittany a sheepish smile.

"This is ridiculous," she mumbles.

"Entirely," Brittany agrees.

Undressing proves far more difficult a task than Santana had anticipated that it would, first off, because Santana can't quite seem to make her fingers cooperate with what she wants them to do, and, secondly, because Santana also can't keep from staring at Brittany, though she knows she really oughtn't to do so. Santana fumbles with her own belt buckle and can scarcely manage to extract her arms from her sleeves. The more skin Brittany shows, the more Santana trips.

Eventually, her two problems come to a head.

(She feels so stupid and useless.)

"Need some help with that, darlin'?" Brittany asks, watching Santana struggle with the same several buttons on her corset for what must be the dozenth time.

Santana makes one last attempt at the buttons but finds them even more resistant than they seemed to her at the first. Before she can do anything for it, frustrated tears spring to her eyes, and heat prickles at the back of her throat.

Damn buttons. Damn corset.

Tears blur Santana's vision until she finds that she can no longer even properly see her own fingers to work them. She sighs, defeated, and nods in response to Brittany's question, ashamed of herself both for her own ineptitude and also for crying because of it. Brittany must think that Santana is the biggest idiot. Brittany steps around behind her.

"Sorry," Santana sniffs, wiping at her eyes.

Brittany shakes her head, eyes smiling but mouth not, probably in an effort to spare Santana's feelings. "Don't worry," she says sweetly, setting to work unfastening Santana from her corset. Her thumbs brush over Santana's bare back. "It's okay," she whispers, and she leans down, pressing a kiss to the top of Santana's neck through the veil of Santana's hair.

"I wish I had told you my secret earlier when we were in the woods," Santana pouts.

"You can tell me tomorrow," Brittany says wisely, managing to pop open the last button on the line. Then, "There you go."

Santana almost doesn't register it when the corset falls away from her body, exposing her skin to the night air, and neither does she know what to do when Brittany stoops down in front of her and helps to free her from her knickers, pulling them down so Santana can step out of them.

In the next second, Brittany moves away from Santana and peels her own shift up over her head so that she stands before Santana entirely naked. Their clothing fans out around them like pressed flower petals strewn over the sand, and Santana doesn't think that anyone has ever seen anything as wonderful as what she sees now—which is to say, Brittany's body unclothed under the moonlight.

For a full minute, Santana remains silent and can do no more than stare, taking in the sharp angles of Brittany's hipbones and the beautiful rounds of Brittany's breasts, feeling breathless and stupider than ever before. When Brittany starts laughing, Santana doesn't know what to say except for, "I don't know how to swim," both helpless and honest at once.

Brittany just reaches for Santana's hand. "Hold on to me, then," she instructs.

(The imprint of Brittany's kiss still burns against Santana's skin.)

(Santana accepts Brittany's hand, helpless, helpless, hopeless.)

Walking down to the water with Brittany, it vaguely occurs to Santana that she might be just a little drunk. She doesn't have much time to process the thought before she and Brittany reach the waterline, though. Brittany gives her fingers a squeeze.

"We'll stay where you can touch the bottom," Brittany assures her, stepping into the lake up to her ankles.

"Okay," Santana says lamely, still too caught up in Brittany's beauty and in the surreal experience of standing naked on an Iowa beachfront after midnight to say anything else. She toes the water and finds it surprisingly warm and inviting. After another second of hesitation, she steps fully into the seiche.

Brittany extends two hands to Santana, guiding her deeper into the lake. The sand between Santana's toes feels slimy to the touch, and small rocks poke at the soles of her feet. She makes it in all the way to her knees before Brittany gives her a tug and pulls her forward, all in a rush. Both girls scream, falling into the water to their waists.

"You ready?" Sam calls down the beach.

"Not yet!" Brittany says quickly, wearing a wide, giddy grin, spitting out water and scrambling to find her feet again, though she was the one to knock herself over. She tugs Santana to where the waterline lingers just below their collarbones, covering their bodies so that only their heads and necks remain visible over the light waves. "Okay," she calls, "We're covering our eyes now!" and both girls do.

For several minutes, Santana sees nothing but the darkness of her own palm. She doesn't move and hardly breathes. One of her feet remains planted on the lake bottom; the other one floats out to the side, balancing her against the waves. In the distance, she can hear the boys laughing and prattling, though she can't make out their words. Her spare hand hooks around Brittany's elbow under the water, making it her moor.

After what seems like a long while, the boys start to whoop, and Santana hears splashing. The water around her pitches, disturbed from where the boys have entered the lake. Briefly, the waves rise, slapping the underside of Santana's chin and threatening to overrun her. For a second, both Santana's feet leave the ground, and Santana startles, clinging tighter to Brittany.

Blaine calls out, "You can open your eyes now!"

Santana's feet touch bottom again.

She removes her hand from over her eyes and discovers the boys submerged up to their chins, bobbing several yards away and deeper out from where she stands with Brittany. Most of the boys tread water, actually swimming to keep themselves afloat, though Finn Hudson stands flatfooted. The boys wave to her and Brittany, wearing dopey smiles.

(Santana can't help but notice how Kurt stands apart from the other boys and won't look anyone in the eyes. She somehow feels sad for him without really knowing why.)

After Finn splashes Puck in the face—"This is tops!"—the boys spend the next several moments trying to drown one another while Brittany and Santana shout instructions to them, advising them on where to dodge and whom to dunk, their voices all echoing over the water and into the moon-bright sky.

The boys' wrestling goes on in good fun for a long time until Rory takes a particularly hard elbow to the nose, and the game suddenly loses its appeal. From then on, each man takes to exploring his own area of the water, none of them touching one another—a development which seems to be for the best.

Eventually, Blaine pipes up, "Hey, guys, the moon's so bright that you can see underwater!" and everyone immediately begins to investigate.

"Do you want to see?" Brittany asks Santana, glancing between Santana's face and the water.

Though Santana has never been underwater before except in the bathtub when she was a child, she doesn't hesitate to nod her head yes and offer Brittany a smile.

"Hold your breath," Brittany tells her, "and hang on tight to me. We'll go on three, okay? Just watch my eyes. One, two, three!"

Santana breathes in deeply and grabs onto Brittany by both elbows, following Brittany as she bobs up onto her tiptoes and then sinks down under the waves. At first, water burns Santana's eyes and fills up her nose, and she balks, sharp pain shooting through her sinuses, but then she exhales slightly and the pressure eases. She forces her eyelids open to see Brittany staring her in the face.

Just as Blaine promised, the moonlight illuminates the water enough so that Santana can see Brittany almost as well as if they were above the surface. Loose tendrils of Brittany's golden hair wave around her face like May ribbons in a wavering wind, and Brittany's skin reflects white like porcelain against the dark water. Amongst all her other beauties, Brittany's eyes still manage to catch Santana, less tiger and blue than moon and night under so many shadows.

All at once, Santana remembers a story she once read as a child about a fisherman who fell in love with a mermaid and sold his soul just to be with her and instantly knows that if she weren't herself already damned, she would do the same for Brittany in a trice.

Before Santana can do anything for how she feels, Brittany's eyes turn reverent and deep, and she leans forward through the water, pressing a kiss to Santana's lips like none Santana has ever felt before. Underwater, Brittany's mouth feels otherworldly and pliant, wet and soft all over and hot and cold at once. It's only a peck, but Santana closes her eyes to it all the same, sinking into the touch.

When Brittany peels back, Santana keeps her eyes closed, allowing Brittany to guide her back to the surface, blind.

Though Santana had only held her breath for a few seconds, it feels like one hundred years. She breathes in deeply as soon as she finds air, and her eyelids flutter open as though she were waking from a dream.

Brittany grins at her and presses a finger to her lips.

"Secret," she says as the boys begin to shout at them from across the way.

"Secret," Santana agrees.

* * *

><p>When Brittany's fingers brush Santana's hipbone for the first time under the water, Santana thinks it must be an accident.<p>

The two girls stand watching the boys make waves to splash each other, laughing as Sam dodges a swell come from Blaine only to run into one come from Finn in the next second. What must be Brittany's thumb sweeps over Santana's skin, and Santana stiffens at the touch, momentarily mesmerized by it.

"Britt," she says stupidly, but Brittany doesn't answer.

In the next second, Brittany's thumb finds Santana's hipbone again. This time, it definitely isn't an accident; Brittany's touch lingers, and Brittany pets over Santana's skin, smoothing it. All of a sudden, Santana's whole body feels rung like a bell and livened to the core. She's never warmed to Brittany so quickly before. Her insides throb, and she suddenly wishes more than anything that Brittany's fingers would slide just a bit further down and more to the right.

She meets Brittany's eyes and finds them wild under the moonlight.

(Maybe Brittany is a mermaid out to lead Santana to the depths after all.)

"No fair," Santana says blearily, and Brittany grins at her.

"No fair what?" Brittany says, feigning perfect innocence, even as she gives Santana's skin another long, slow stroke under the water. She looks somehow both silly and wicked at once, her hair wet and pushed back from her face, her mouth curled into a most precocious smirk.

Just then, the boys seem to take notice of Brittany and Santana's conference.

"They're planning something!" Rory cries, as concerned as if he were a scout who happened upon traitors in league.

"Are not!" Brittany protests.

But she speaks too late.

In the next second, the boys all work together to push a wave in the girls' direction, building it up behind their arms and flinging it out as though they were Greek or Roman gods loosing forth a storm. The water crests behind their push only to diminish as it travels. By the time the wave reaches Brittany and Santana, it hardly splashes them at all.

"Well done, fellas," Santana smirks, and Brittany gives a triumphant whoop.

At that exact moment, Kurt Hummel lets out the shrillest shriek Santana has ever heard, hitting an octave that would shatter Rachel Berry's glass goblet without any electric coils or circus magic at all. He jolts in the water, jetting back a full five feet from where he stood, moving to where the lake covers him only up to his waist.

"Kurt, what the hell?" Puck shouts, rubbing his ears.

"Something brushed my leg!" Kurt screams, pointing at the water. "Something living!"

"Kurt, calm down! It was probably just a fish," Sam soothes.

But no matter how much anyone tries to reassure him, Kurt refuses to trust the lake and insists on getting out of it, becoming increasingly hysterical with every passing moment. Once Kurt makes his demands, Blaine notes the late hour, and the other boys begin to grumble about how they'll hate themselves for their poor decisions in the morning.

"My fingers are getting all wrinkly," Brittany observes, scrunching up her nose.

Begrudgingly, the group agrees to turn in for the night.

* * *

><p>They exit the water in reverse order from how they got into it, with the boys leaving the lake first and then the girls after them. They follow the same procedure as before, with the one group turning its back and closing its eyes while the other dresses and vice-versa. It takes a long while for everyone to fit on their clothes over their wet skin and even longer for them to brush the sand which clings to their feet and hands away so that it doesn't follow them all the way back to the white city and into their waiting beds.<p>

Brittany and Santana clothe themselves in silence, watching each other with wide smiles and sparks of warm _something_ in their eyes. Out of the water, Santana's head feels clearer than it did before, though her body still thrums so strongly to Brittany's tune that she wonders if she'll be able to sleep tonight or even ever again really.

Santana doesn't even have to ask for Brittany's help buttoning her corset or latching her belt, for Brittany steps forward to perform both tasks automatically, as if she had known Santana's need before Santana herself even registered it.

She stands in front of Santana wearing her queer, thoughtful smile.

"Tomorrow?" she says quietly.

It takes a full second for Santana to catch her meaning, but then.

"Tomorrow," Santana agrees, returning Brittany's smile.

After everyone finishes dressing, the boys reequip the wheelbarrow, tying down the kegs, before setting off to return their stolen goods to the mess pit. Only Sam and Puck hang back for the purpose of escorting Brittany and Santana to their respective beds.

"Can we walk with Sam and Brittany before we go back to our tent?" Santana asks Puck in a small voice, not ready to say goodbye to Brittany for the night.

(Never ready to say goodbye to Brittany, really.)

To her surprise, Puck nods his consent. "Sure thing, ladybird," he says, looping her arm through his and offering what from him is a soft smile. He starts to lead the group along. "It's safer that way anyway," he adds, and, for a minute, Santana puzzles over what his words.

Only after a few more paces does Santana remember that Brittany may well return home tonight to find a very angry father waiting up for her.

(All the giddiness she felt before drains out of her.)

Puck walks at Santana's right side and Brittany at Santana's left. Though Santana goes arm-in-arm with Puck, she feels more connected to Brittany, though Brittany doesn't touch her at all. Their group passes from the beach to the forest in silence, stepping through many brachiated shadows and treading over innumerable dried leaves. Santana wishes very much that Brittany didn't have to go home tonight—or rather that she and Brittany could go home together, to just one place.

When their party stops outside the Pierce tent, it feels much too soon for them to part.

Everything inside Santana longs to kiss Brittany goodnight and to thank her for their day spent together—for liking her kisses and for telling her secrets and for trusting her and for making her laugh and most of all for loving her, though no one else had ever done it before.

As it is, Santana can only take Brittany's hand in her own and kiss her knuckles, friendly, with Sam and Puck watching.

"Goodnight," she whispers.

"Goodnight," Brittany whispers back.

They stand and stare at each other for a long moment. Santana can't see Brittany's eyes under the shadow of the tent, but she can see her expression, fervent as an ember peeking out from beneath a flame. Brittany peels her fingers back and offers Sam and Puck a nod, though her gaze never leaves Santana.

Without a word, she drops to the grass and crawls under the tent flaps, disappearing beyond the canvas. Sam, Puck, and Santana listen, dreading to hear Mr. Pierce's voice, hoping for silence instead.

(They get their wish.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: A special thanks to my dear friend Dr. Ruth at doctoruth on tumblr for providing such astute commentary on the story. Also, all my gratitude to my homegirl Lu at ididntmeanyou for her help with the Spanish translations. As always, I could not have done this without my flawless beta Han at socallmedaisy, who is basically the best human in the world, in case y'all wondered about it.<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**No se puede eludir la Muerte, Santana. Viene para todos : You can't evade Death, Santana. It comes for us all**_

_**"Por supuesto, debes impresionarla. Muestrale tu debilidad. Bien" : "Of course, you must impress her. Show her your weakness. Good"**_

_**Es un mal presagio, Santana : It's a bad omen, Santana**_

_**abstemia : teetotaler**_

_**"Esto convierte a los hombres en tontos, Santana" : "It makes men into fools, Santana"**_

_**Haznos silenciosos. (Secreto.) : Make us silent. (Secret.)**_


	12. Fireworks

**Chapter 10: Fireworks**

**Monday, July 4th, 1898: Ackley, Iowa**

Santana feels like a stranger to herself when she awakens, like her mind and body are far away from her, and her memories from last night belong to someone else. It takes her a full half-minute to realize that she didn't fall asleep alone: Puck lies underneath her, sprawled out like a great, lazy dog, his face buried in her shirtsleeve.

Through her haze, Santana vaguely remembers that Puck couldn't manage to untie his rolled sleeping mat after returning to their tent for the night. She also remembers that she took pity on Puck's clumsiness, offering to share her cot with him in exchange for his promise to comport himself as a gentleman and stay on his best behavior until morning.

As far as Santana can tell, Puck kept his word; both he and Santana are fully clothed, and Santana can't taste his lips on her anywhere.

(Just apples and alcohol and Brittany's mermaid kiss.)

Puck stirs in the dark.

"It's time to get up, ladybird," he groans, stretching his shoulders.

His chest rises at Santana's back, puffing out like a robin's breast as he unfurls. Every place where his body touches Santana's feels sweat-damp and fever-hot. Darkness pervades the tent, and it doesn't seem to Santana as if she even slept at all. Her head swims.

"Can't we just catch a later train?" she complains, only mostly joking.

She feels sunburned and achy all over, her throat parched from laughing and crying and speaking too loudly, her eyes dry and lips cracked from yesterday's intense heat. Her skin stinks of lake water and perspiration, and her hair curls around her face and at her collarbones, still wet from bathing. The longer she wakes, the more she realizes her own sorry state.

Puck seems equally unwell. He wipes the sweat from his face and clears his throat noisily.

"The circus don't wait for nobody," he says in a thick voice, "and neither does Ma Jones' coffee."

* * *

><p>Both Puck and Santana move sluggishly and fumble through their morning routines.<p>

Santana devotes a quarter hour to combing through the knots in her hair and feels close to tears the whole time she's at it, battling with more tangles and kinks than she can count. Puck cuts himself shaving his face and curses so vociferously that Santana wonders if Mr. Adams won't learn some new blasphemies even all the way from his hotel in downtown Storm Lake.

By the time Santana and Puck stumble out of their tent together into the moonlight, neither one of them feels kindly disposed toward anything. Puck scowls while taking down their tent, and Santana scowls watching him do it.

(Puck doesn't even bother to take Santana's arm as he leads her to the mess.)

Their accomplices from last night's heist fare no better than they do.

Finn Hudson's eyes have swelled up so much that they hardly seem open at all. Blaine looks positively green, red firelight notwithstanding. Rory holds his head in his hands and groans and Kurt pokes at his eggs as if he's never seen anything so repulsive on a plate before. Even the usually sunny Sam seems sullen and sleepy. He yawns widely and buries his face at the crook of his elbow against the table.

Brittany is nowhere in sight.

Santana whines and flops down on the grass while Puck goes to fetch coffee, curling her knees up to her chest and watching in the direction of the Pierce's tent, hoping that Brittany is well, if not still soundly sleeping.

When Puck returns to Santana with her drink, she nods her thanks to him but says nothing. Puck takes a seat beside her, and they both sigh, impossibly tired though they've only just begun the day.

* * *

><p>Santana and the boys breakfast in silence, none of them talking to one another or to anyone else around them. They eat with downcast eyes and heavy heads, already put upon though the sun has yet to rise. When the departure bell rings above them, the lot of them winces, and Rory moans. They peel themselves from their places, shuffling toward the wagon bay.<p>

Only once they reach the vehicles does Brittany appear amidst the hubbub, sidling up beside Santana as if from nowhere, hair wet and her eyes tired, but her whole self beautiful as ever. She yawns into her hand and then wraps her arms around Santana's waist, settling her chin onto Santana's shoulder, nuzzling against Santana's skin.

Santana gasps a little at the contact, still not accustomed to having so much Brittany everywhere around her, though she finds herself in such situations often enough nowadays and though she loves it whenever she does so. She folds her arms over Brittany's, binding Brittany to her.

"Are you going to sit with me on the train?" she asks, trying not to sound too hopeful that Brittany will say yes, in case Brittany would rather not sit with her, whatever the reason.

Brittany doesn't speak. She only nods, her nose and lips rubbing over the crook of Santana's neck in not-quite-a-kiss.

Santana shivers at the touch. "Well, that's the first good thing about today," she says honestly.

Brittany's lips lift into a smile on her skin.

Santana smiles, too. "You don't talk much when you're sleepy, do you?" she teases, rubbing her thumbs over Brittany's wrists.

Brittany settles even further into her, shaking her head no. Her lips pout against Santana's skin, and Santana's heart all but melts for Brittany's preciousness.

"That's okay," Santana says, reaching up to stroke Brittany's hair. "I never talk much in the mornings, either. We can sleep on the train."

Brittany sighs, contented, and Santana loves her.

* * *

><p>Puck parts from Brittany and Santana at the depot without saying a word to them, going away sleepy, sulky, or both ways at once. In any case, Santana can't help but feel a smidge grateful to see him go.<p>

After Puck disappears from sight, Brittany and Santana clamber into a mostly empty boxcar together and take up residence in a corner, Santana tucking in first, and Brittany curling up beside her, head nestled against the crook of Santana's neck. Brittany hasn't really woken up since she first hugged Santana back at the camp, and neither has she said a word aloud to anyone all morning.

Almost immediately, Brittany's breathing turns deep and rhythmic, like the waves on Storm Lake last night under the full moon, and Santana wonders if she's fallen to sleep. But then Santana feels Brittany's mouth shift into a cat-smile against her skin.

"What is it, Britt?" she asks, stroking through Brittany's hair with her fingers, absentminded.

Brittany's smile blooms into a full grin that Santana can feel but not see. "Today isn't tomorrow anymore," Brittany says dreamily. "Today's today."

And suddenly Santana remembers.

Last night after they swam in the lake, Santana promised to tell Brittany her secret.

For a moment, Santana's hand stills in Brittany's hair, and Santana hesitates, wondering if she didn't make the sort of grave, drunken mistake about which one reads in books, promising to reveal her love to Brittany in a moment when everything seemed so easy.

But then Brittany exhales against Santana's skin, and then Brittany wraps her arms tighter around Santana's middle, sinking into her, and suddenly Santana finds that she made no mistake at all.

After everything that happened between her and Brittany yesterday—their scare on the promenade in town, the knife throwing in the woods, Brittany's secret kisses to Santana on the beach—Santana knows that she loves Brittany so much that she couldn't keep from saying so for another day even if she had made no promise to Brittany yesterday at all.

She also knows that Brittany loves her back so much.

Brittany shifts against Santana, nuzzling deeper into her, and, when she does, Santana sets her resolve: She'll tell Brittany her secret once they get to camp. She'll wait until they're alone together and set to their chores before lunchtime, and then she'll do it.

(When Santana first arrived at the circus, Puck told her that the truth didn't matter anymore, but Santana knows now that he was wrong.)

(It matters more than anything.)

Just a few days ago, Santana dreaded to confess her love to Brittany, but now she almost can't wait to do so because she knows how much Brittany longs to hear the words, and Santana loves to give Brittany things.

She kisses some of the sweetness she feels for Brittany into Brittany's hair. "Soon," she promises, though Brittany is already asleep and doesn't hear her say so.

When the train's whistle sounds over the rail yard, Santana shivers and hunkers down, closing her eyes. As the train starts to roll along its tracks, she continues to comb through Brittany's hair, sinking into its silk, into Brittany's warmth upon her warmth, into Brittany's metered breaths, poems on her skin.

(When Santana dreams, she finds herself and Brittany by the seashore in the Carolinas, though she's never visited such a place before in her waking hours.)

(The sky overhead is overcast and the sea looks like Storm Lake. Brittany skips along the shoreline, dropping coins in the sand behind her as if they were breadcrumbs and she and Santana were in a fairytale. When Santana stoops to retrieve the coins, she realizes that they're actually tarot cards instead.)

(Though she tries, she cannot read them.)

* * *

><p>"It would serve you right if the train left you both behind, you know."<p>

A shrill voice cuts Santana from her dreams. It sounds nothing like Brittany's sleepy mumble and nothing like what Santana wants to hear.

Santana stirs and feels Brittany do the same against her breast. The train has stopped, but Santana still feels as if she's in motion—from riding rails and waves and always going away to somewhere new, never resting for long. Santana opens her eyes to find Rachel Berry hovering above her, arms crossed over a white pinafore. Rachel doesn't seem at all pleased.

As soon as she sees that she has Santana's attention, Rachel continues.

"I know you got up to mischief last night, and I'm determined to find out what it is. Don't think I didn't notice that you and Sam and Puck and Finn all arrived at breakfast looking as poor for sleep as if you were paupers of it."

Just then, Brittany rights herself in Santana's arms. "But Santana and I don't go to church, Rachel. Neither do the boys. No one in the circus does," she says, just so, without missing a beat. Her voice sounds scratchy from too little sleep.

It takes Rachel a half second to react.

Her mouth falls open and an emotion that looks strangely like hurt passes over her eyes, there and then gone in an instant. She closes her mouth and gives her head a little shake, clearing whatever confusion Brittany caused her. She fixes Brittany with an unreadable expression.

"My father says that Mr. Adams might have to start dismissing members of the company if Mr. Fabray doesn't sign the papers soon," Rachel says, low and serious. "Brittany, whatever you're up to, you really ought to consider your role at this circus and how much it means to you to stay on the lists." After a second's pause, Rachel adds, "You, too, Santana," before turning toward the door to the boxcar, leaving Brittany and Santana behind without another word.

Mr. Berry and the quadroon manservant wait for Rachel outside the train, standing close to each other, their elbows knocked together. If Santana didn't know better, she'd say they look sad. They help Rachel onto the grass beside them, holding her steady as she jumps down from the flatbed.

Brittany shifts, peeling herself from Santana to stand, but Santana remains tucked into the boxcar corner, a nervous knot at the pit of her stomach. What if Rachel finds out that Santana, Brittany, and the boys stole spirits from the mess pit last night? Worse yet, what if Mr. Adams does? If Mr. Adams has it in his mind to fire someone from the circus, Santana will be the first to go, and then what? Santana might never see Brittany again. She gulps.

"Come on, darlin'," Brittany says, reaching for Santana's hand to help Santana up from the floor.

Santana remains rooted to her spot. She wets her lips. When she looks up at Brittany, she can feel the wideness of her own eyes and hear the fear in her own voice, "Brittany, do you think—is the circus really in trouble?"

Brittany fixes Santana with one of her long, searching looks, peering down deep like a child trying to see to the bottom of a well. She frowns as she thinks through the question. "Quinn's daddy will sign the papers," she says slowly. "The wedding's on Saturday."

She doesn't sound just so, though.

(Santana feels a twinge.)

(One ought not to deal Death to the man who wants to buy the circus.)

The station whistle tolls, and both Brittany and Santana flinch. Brittany offers her hand to Santana again and this time Santana accepts it, allowing Brittany to tug her to her feet. After righting their skirts, the two girls hurry from the train, leaping to the ground, their hands still linked between them. For the split instant they hang suspended in the air, Santana's belly flips over. This new town feels different to her than Storm Lake already—like a place where everything happens all in a rush.

Whereas normally the circus company mills about the depot in the mornings, aimless, while the supes equip the wagons for the parade into town, today everyone assembles on the lawn, rank and file. At first, Santana doesn't understand why, but then she spots Ken hopping onto an overturned box, positioning himself to address the crowd.

Brittany leads Santana by the pinky finger in amongst the throng; they take places beside the family of midgets and the Famed Giantess of Akron from the freak show. Brittany quirks an eyebrow at Santana, obviously no savvier than she as to the nature of this impromptu convocation.

"All right, you lot!" Ken bellows, waving to catch everyone's attention so he can speak. "Last night was a bust, so today we've got to recuperate the loss! Mr. Adams wants everybody in top form, with no slip ups! He says that any man who missteps will forfeit his next paycheck. He says that any man who busts the show will be put on probation, and may have his name struck plumb from the lists."

At Ken's word, Santana shudders, suddenly more nervous than she could say. She glances at Brittany out of the corner of her eye. She watches as Brittany shuffles her feet, anxious, against grass and knows why.

"Now," Ken goes on, "since today is Independence Day—"

Santana hadn't realized the date. She's lost track of the calendar since joining the circus.

(All her days revolve around Brittany now.)

"—we're gonna stage an American spectacular for the good folks of Ackley. Mr. Adams ordered an hun'erd and fifty bags of ticker tape for our parade today, and we'll pass 'em out to the ladies to throw while you fellas keep to the clowning and sport. We want to keep the parade extra lively today, you hear? If any of the gillies wish you a happy Glorious Fourth, you say, 'God bless America!'"

"Yes, sir," the company choruses.

Ken smirks. "Good," he says. "Now, you ladies best ration your ticker tape. The road through Ackley ain't that long, but we don't want you to waste all the fun before we make it into camp. Keep a lookout down the road."

"Yes, sir," chorus the ladies.

After Ken hops down from his perch, he and a handful of supes distribute small, cloth bags to the ladies in the crowd, each bag only big enough to hold a handful or two of ticker tape. When Brittany opens her bag to check its contents, Ken spots her doing so from across the way and yells at her that she ought to stop, as if looking were the same as wasting. Both Brittany and Santana turn their backs on Ken and roll their eyes at him at once.

"He's just jealous that he won't get to throw any ticker tape," Santana grouses.

"Well, he should be," Brittany grins. "This'll be fun, darlin'."

* * *

><p>True to Brittany's word, the parade into town proves very droll.<p>

Brittany and Santana sit on the back of a bray, tossing pinches of ticker tape to the wind and waving to the townsfolk.

Ackley looks sparse compared to other towns that Santana has visited with the circus, with just a few whitewashed shops and two stone churches standing along the main street, and a handful of scattered mills and houses located just beyond the railway. Somehow none of the buildings seems to fill much space.

The biggest structure in sight is a four-story hotel that rises up in the distance; it somehow strikes Santana as lonely, with no other tall buildings around to match its great stature.

(Santana supposes that the Adams and Fabray families will stay there for the night.)

Ackley's small size notwithstanding, a goodly crowd turns out for the parade, filling up the promenades along the street and waving little flags on sticks. The circus band plays "Huzza! 'Tis the Fourth of July!" and "Up with the Flag" in lively measures and the townsfolk sing along in proud, brave voices.

_Oh! Come, boys, come, with a merry heart and will  
><em>_Up with the flag  
><em>_Up with the flag  
><em>_And bear it onward to victory still  
><em>_Up with the flag and away!_

Some of the little children on the street corners clutch whistles and tin kazoos. When they play the instruments to greet the circus processional, Santana feels keenly grateful to them.

Though Ken cautioned the circus women that their ticker tape would perhaps run low, really, there seems to be no shortage of it. White strips of confetti paper pitter down from above like snow without the cold, blotting the air and sticking to the wets of people's lips and in ladies' hair, collecting along the brims of men's hats.

Briefly, Santana remembers a long ago day when her father took her to Fifth Avenue to watch a parade celebrating the construction of Lady Liberty in the harbor. Her recollections of the occasion are sparse ones—more flashes than anything. It was one of the few times when Papa allowed her out of the bachelor cottage. They arrived too late for the ticker tape but too early to see any important persons. Papa carried her on his hip so that she could see over the hats and bonnets. She recalls the scent of strong cologne clinging to his coat collar perhaps better than any of the sights.

Even brushing over the memory causes Santana's heart a twinge beneath her breast.

She fights the feeling down, focusing on the present moment instead, on the parade she can actually see, on a memory that will always stay a good one for her and never rust over, obscured by other things.

Sunlight filters through the tape, and Santana swims her hand through it in the air, laughing. At first, she can't figure out why it seems like an especial amount of ticker tape seems to fall onto her compared to the other people nearby her, but then she catches Brittany purposefully letting pinches of it go just behind her head.

"Hey!" she yelps, diving to grab Brittany's bag away.

"Santana!" Brittany shrieks, ticker tape spilling onto her skirt as she tries and fails to dodge Santana's advance. She laughs, golden, and twists away from Santana's touch. "No fair! Ken said we had to ration it!"

Seeing Brittany smile, so wily and effulgent under the morning sun, turns something over in Santana's chest, and her invisible string gives a tug. For the first time since riding the train, it occurs to Santana that in just a quarter or half hour's time, she'll confess her love to Brittany. Once they arrive at the camp and have a moment alone together, she'll do it.

She laughs, wide, and digs her fingers into Brittany's sides, tickling her. Brittany shrieks again and falls over against the bed of the bray. She laughs and laughs, and Santana, too.

"Happy—Glorious—Fourth—Santana!" Brittany giggles, unable to escape Santana's touch.

Santana grins and redoubles her tickling efforts. "God bless America!" she says.

* * *

><p>Brittany spends the rest of the parade combing the ticker tape from Santana's hair and apologizing for making such a mess. "I didn't know it would stick so much, darlin'," she pouts.<p>

Santana just shrugs. "If it means that you'll keep running your fingers through my hair, I don't mind it at all," she says honestly, leaning back into Brittany's touch, closing her eyes and enjoying Brittany's gentleness.

She starts to add, "Besides, it's not your fault that my hair is so flossy" at the same time that Brittany says, "Your hair is so pretty."

Both girls trip over their words and grin at each other, bashful, grateful, and in love.

A vivid blush blooms over Santana's skin. She wants to say something else, too—_Thank you_, for starters—but doesn't get the chance to do so before the bray rambles to a halt just beyond the white city and Shane motions for Brittany and Santana to disembark from the bed.

As she hops down from the bray, it occurs to Santana how very close she is to telling Brittany the truth. Within just minutes, they'll be alone together, and then Santana can say it. She offers Brittany a glance and Brittany catches her doing so out of the corner of her eye.

"What?" Brittany says, wearing her cat-smile.

Santana shrugs. "Can we go someplace private, maybe?"

They don't get the chance.

"Gather 'round, everyone!"

This time, the call comes from Mr. Adams himself. He stands on the back of a flatbed cart as though it were payday, looking smart in a long, navy frock coat with silk lapels, a handsome blue-and-green striped bowtie, gold cufflinks and a gold tiepin, and a felt bowler hat. His apparel wouldn't be out of place at a Rockefeller or Vanderbilt luncheon.

(Something about it seems wrong for the moment, though.)

(He hasn't made good on any notes payable yet.)

The fineness of Mr. Adams' dress so interests Santana that it takes her a full minute to realize that he doesn't stand atop the flatbed cart alone: a tall man with a broad chin, styled hair, and condescending smirk flanks him. The man seems to wear a perpetual squint. His clothing is nowhere near as fine as Mr. Adams'—he dons a gray sack coat and four-in-hand tie with no hat—and he carries with him two familiar implements.

A small ledger and a pencil.

Like Quinn's.

When Santana looks to Brittany for an explanation as to the strange man's identity, she finds Brittany with her brow furrowed, obviously no savvier than she. Santana mirrors Brittany's frown, and the two girls join the throng assembled before Mr. Adams' cart. They stand beside Rory and some of his clown friends. Mr. Adams beams at his employees.

"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you Mr. Roderick Remington of the Associated Press!" he booms. "Mr. Remington is a most estimable journalist who's come to us from the great city of Chicago. He intends to write up an article on our big Independence Day spectacular.

Now, I've given Mr. Remington full access to our camp for the day in order to allow him to get a real idea about the high caliber operation that we run here at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie. Mr. Remington intends to gather material for his article throughout the day and attend both our matinee and evening shows, to boot. His story will be a true exclusive! Just excellent stuff.

I ask you all to help me make Mr. Remington feel at home in our outfit. Please treat him with our best hospitality and be forthcoming in your interactions with him. If Mr. Remington asks you for an interview, please provide him with whatever answers he seeks. We're an open book to our good friends at the A.P.

It's our great pleasure to have Mr. Remington as our guest today. Please join me in welcoming him to the circus!"

Though Mr. Adams himself applauds loudly and encourages his employees to do the same, Santana notices that the company members around her seem less than enthusiastic about the prospect of hosting Mr. Remington at the camp. Those who do clap in his honor do so only halfheartedly. Everyone else turns downright cold.

"So we're supposed to mollycoddle the gilly, eh?" Rory mumbles to the clown beside him.

The second clown responds with a sneer and directs an obscene gesture at Misters Adams and Remington. The other clowns all laugh, and Santana recoils, suddenly nervous for their meanness. She shoots a glance at Brittany, who still wears a furrowed brow.

"Thank you kindly!" Mr. Remington says, in response to what meager applause he receives.

His voice is just as loud as Mr. Adams' and sounds decidedly boastful. He appears oblivious to the fact that no one acts especially glad to have him in camp save Mr. Adams. He gestures for the company to quiet down, which they do almost immediately.

"Thank you for your warm welcome! I look forward to speaking with you today. You may not be aware, but an operation such as yours holds some degree of mystery to uninitiated outsiders. I consider it quite the journalistic opportunity to get a firsthand glimpse at what goes on behind the scenes at a traveling circus such as your own—to learn your secrets, if you will."

Mr. Remington pauses for more applause, but no one offers it to him.

(Santana squirms where she stands, uncomfortable though she can't exactly say why.)

Mr. Remington's smirk falters slightly, but when he speaks, he continues to do so in the same boastful tones as before, "I'd like to have a photograph to go along with my story! I brought with me a photographer today, so if we could have you good folks quickly line up, we'll get in a shot. Now, Mr. Halberstadt is just back there—"

Mr. Remington points in the direction of a tired-looking young man with mouse-brown hair, baggy trousers, and puffy eyes. The young man stands at the rear of the company, leaning against a carriage that Santana doesn't recognize. He holds a lumpy bag of equipment slung over one shoulder and carries a bundle of rods that Santana recognizes as a camera tripod in his free hand. He seems thoroughly unenthusiastic about being at the circus.

(No one moves.)

"You heard the man!" Mr. Adams snaps.

(Everyone moves, all at once.)

"I've never been photographed," Santana admits to Brittany as the two girls link pinky fingers and set off toward Mr. Halberstadt.

"I haven't, either," Brittany says. She wears a quiet thrill in her voice.

* * *

><p>For a group of persons who seamlessly conduct an elaborately choreographed parade thrice daily, the company can't seem to arrange itself for the photograph. Ken bellows at everyone to stand here and stand there, but no one very well heeds him.<p>

Many of the taller fellows—like Sam and Finn—scrabble to stand at the fore of the group, directly in front of the camera, enthused by the prospect of having their likenesses printed in the newspaper, while the Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie and other petite ladies insist on standing near the back of the crowd, disgusted at the vulgarity of the whole photograph-taking enterprise.

At first, there's confusion as to whether Mr. Remington would prefer to have only the circus performers in his photograph or if he would like to have everyone under Mr. Adams' employ in the shot, as well. Ma Jones protests loudly that she doesn't have time to "sit for this fool thing," but Sam insists that a photograph of the circus without Ma Jones in it is no real photograph of the circus at all, and several of the other boys say _Aye! Aye!_ until Ma and her girls have no other recourse but to join with the rest of the convocation.

Once the kitchen girls line up, the supes, midway staff, seamstresses, and band do, too, until all five-hundred souls of the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie stand delineated into six crude rows before the camera. With some prodding from the beleaguered Mr. Halberstadt, the company begins to sort out by height, with the taller fellows moving to the back and little children coming to the front.

Santana finds herself jostled and herded on every side. She tries to keep hold of Brittany but begins to lose her grip amidst so much movement and confusion. Their hands slip apart.

"Stand here!" Ken snarls, grabbing Santana by the shoulders and yanking her into place directly in the center of the congeries.

For an instant, Santana loses track of Brittany, unable to see sunshine blonde or starlit blue anywhere. Panic floods Santana, and she starts, feeling quite like she did as a child on the few occasions when she would call for her grandmother or father and no one would answer her.

She fumbles, hating to go without Brittany for such a momentous event, but then a warm body slips in beside her.

"Hey, darlin'!"

"Brittany!"

The girls haven't time to do more than acknowledge each other before Mr. Halberstadt stands before the company and motions for everyone to quiet down.

"All right, all right!" he says, waving his arms. "Listen up! I'll give you lot until the count of three before I begin the photograph. Once I do begin, I'll need you to remain perfectly still for a full minute, until I give you the signal that it's permissible for you to move again. When I'm making the photograph, you must stay in your poses or you'll ruin the image, you hear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well."

Mr. Halberstadt offers the company a stout nod and trundles over to his equipment. It takes him several minutes to arrange his tripod and camera in a way that seems to please him; he glances through the lens, mutters to himself, makes an adjustment, and then glances through the lens again, repeating the process at least five times while the circus waits. As he works, Brittany and Santana face each other, and Brittany grins.

_I'm glad I get to take my first photograph with you_, Brittany mouths.

Santana nods because she feels the same.

For a girl with no birth certificate, baptismal records, or confirmation date, it's strangely exhilarating, knowing that, for the first time in her nearly nineteen years, she'll finally have some lasting proof of her existence beyond just her immediate presence and a few fleeting footprints through Midwestern grass. She and Brittany straighten up and make their poses, their faces turning solemn as they become human statues, Hermiones of Shakespeare.

They and the other circus folk around them hold their breaths as Mr. Halberstadt makes one final adjustment to his tripod and flings the camera cape over his head and shoulders, shrouding himself for the shot. Misters Remington and Adams stand behind Mr. Halberstadt, silently approving. Mr. Halberstadt holds up three fingers and starts to count aloud.

"One."

(Santana feels a swoop in her belly.)

"Two."

(She straightens.)

"Three."

Brittany reaches out, and, at the last possible instant, takes hold of Santana's right hand with her left. Their fingers braid together, and Brittany tugs both their hands to rest just over her navel, clearly in the camera's view.

Santana feels another swoop of an entirely different sort. She can't help but smile, though she knows it will be difficult to hold the expression for a full minute without moving. Brittany meets her eyes and smiles just the same.

The camera flashes, searing Santana's vision in a blaze of white and powdered chemical glow. Santana tries her best not to flinch at the sound and light. The back of her hand feels warm against Brittany's belly. Looking into Brittany's eyes, Santana finds it easier than expected to hold a genuine smile. Somehow, it seems right to her that the first record of her existence should happen at the circus—should happen with Brittany.

(Almost too soon, Mr. Halberstadt permits the company to move.)

* * *

><p>At Mr. Halberstadt's word, the circus' six rows quickly collapse into chaos, with everyone hustling all at once to go off to work and rid themselves of Mr. Remington and his intrusions. Santana clutches Brittany's hand. She hasn't forgotten what she had intended to do before Mr. Adams collected the company. Brittany seems not to have forgotten, either; she stares at Santana in her all-seeing way and waits for Santana to lead her somewhere.<p>

Santana hasn't a good idea about where to take Brittany for privacy, but her feet seem to: they start her in the direction of the woods behind the camp, almost of their own volition.

(The woods are as fine a place to make a love confession as any, Santana supposes.)

Nerves jitter in Santana's belly, but she swallows them down, offering Brittany a smile. She tries to draft up some sort of speech in her mind befitting to the occasion but finds she can't do so.

She's never been able to hold to a plan when it involved Brittany anyhow, so, in a way, it hardly seems right that she would do so now.

_Solo sé honesta, Santana._

The girls weave through a sea of shoulders and elbows, dodging this supe here and that kitchen girl there, but scarcely make it ten paces toward the edge of the wagon bay before it happens.

"Santana Puckerman! Brittany Pierce! Where do you two idlers think you're going?"

(Mrs. Schuester has the best way of turning up at the worst times.)

Santana doesn't bother to stifle her groan. She should have known that Mrs. Schuester and whatever powers there are in the universe wouldn't allow her to speak to Brittany so easily today—and not concerning a matter of such great import, especially. She grits her teeth.

(Must it always be so difficult to tell the truth?)

Mrs. Schuester marches up to Santana and Brittany, holding her skirt up around her ankles. Her expression looks fouler than milk three days past curdling. She wags her most shaming finger at Santana and Brittany.

"You skived off your chores yesterday but not today!" she snips.

"We were just about to go ask Ma Jones if she needed any help in the kitchen!" Brittany lies, so much desperation in her voice that Santana wonders if Brittany doesn't know exactly why Santana wanted privacy for them before Mrs. Schuester's interruption.

An evil smirk curls Mrs. Schuester's lips. "Well, she doesn't," she says smugly. "I've just asked her. She said I'm welcome to take you two to work for me"—Brittany opens her mouth to protest, but Mrs. Schuester won't allow her to speak—"I want you to embroider the elephant blankets you never finished yesterday, Brittany." She rounds on Santana, "And, as for you, I'll need your help running inventory in the dressing tent. I've got to count out how many cowboy and Indian costumes we have for the spectacular today, and I'll need you to write out the numbers for me. You can write, can't you, Santana?"

Santana shuffles her feet in the grass. "Yes, ma'am."

Mrs. Schuester smiles even more evilly than before. "Good," she says. "That's what Ma Jones told me."

(Somehow, Santana doesn't feel like it's _good_ at all, though.)

* * *

><p>There are few things worse than feeling as if one has left something incredibly important undone—which is exactly how Santana feels as Mrs. Schuester marches her and Brittany away from the white city and toward the dressing tents.<p>

Santana should have made her confession to Brittany this morning on the train or last night on the beach or even after they touched each other in the tent the other day, for now it seems that she might never have the chance to speak her piece again.

Brittany acts disappointed not in Santana but in their circumstances, and Santana can't help but feel much the same.

Both girls pout as Mrs. Schuester loads Brittany up with the elephant blankets, and they pout even more when Mrs. Schuester orders Brittany away from the dressing tents to do her work because she doesn't want Brittany "causing a rumpus" with Santana from across the room.

"I need Santana's undivided attention," Mrs. Schuester declares.

(Honestly, Santana doubts that she'll get it.)

Brittany offers Santana a sad smile before she goes. "I'll miss you, darlin'," she mumbles.

Mrs. Schuester rolls her eyes. "For Pete's sake!" she says. "You'll see each other again at lunchtime!"

Somehow, lunchtime seems awfully far away, though.

"Goodbye, Britt," Santana pouts, waving Brittany farewell from the tent door.

"Make your long farewells on someone else's dime!" Mrs. Schuester grouses. "Mr. Adams can't afford to have you two waste every working hour of the day mooning over each other!"

She yanks Santana back inside the tent by the elbow.

* * *

><p>Working for Mrs. Schuester without Brittany to help her makes Santana miserable for almost more reasons than Santana can count.<p>

For one thing, Mrs. Schuester seems to delight in criticizing Santana—nothing Santana does is good or fast enough, neither done to Mrs. Schuester's stringent standards.

For another thing, the work seems to never end: Mrs. Schuester spends at least an hour having Santana help her sort through innumerable cowboy, Indian, and homesteader costumes and place them into piles, and then she invents another task for them to do—namely, having Santana act as her scribe, following her around the dressing tent to write down all the new fabrics she would like Mr. Adams to order from the _Sears Roebuck Catalogue_ to patch everyone's costumes for midseason.

"I think some new madder foulard for the clowns' cravats would be nice, but, of course, I might have to bargain for it. If I ask Mr. Adams to order two reams less of shirting than I had originally wanted, he might find such a tradeoff agreeable. Ooh, but I do hate to ask for less shirting, though! I need it all," Mrs. Schuester whines, and Santana only nods, helpless and knowing that none of her advice would be the right thing to say to Mrs. Schuester anyway.

Of course, the worst part of the whole endeavor is Brittany's absence.

Santana can't stop thinking about her.

Brittany always looks beautiful, of course, but today Brittany looks even more beautiful than usual, somehow. She felt so warm, sleeping pressed against Santana's breast on the train. Even now, with Brittany off God-knows-where embroidering blankets and Santana here tallying fabrics in the tent, Santana feels so sweet on Brittany that she can scarcely do anything for it.

Honestly, Santana tries not to spend too much time imagining how Brittany might smile or what Brittany might say or do once Santana finally admits to loving her. Even so, she can't help but look forward to the light in Brittany's eyes and maybe even to a kiss or possibly some touches.

(Santana has never felt so loved or cared for as she does with Brittany's hands upon her skin.)

Santana carries an ache and a hope inside her, wanting and knowing exactly what. The time can't pass quickly enough to take her away from Mrs. Schuester and back to Brittany's presence.

Only after several minutes of daydreaming about Brittany does Santana realize that Mrs. Schuester is still talking to her, prattling on about something.

"—wrapped splints along her wrist so that she couldn't use her thumb and kept them there for six months until my sister wasn't left-handed anymore. You might try it. Santana! Are you even listening?"

Santana starts, "No, ma'am—I mean, yes, ma'am!"

Honestly, Santana hasn't the slightest idea what Mrs. Schuester is talking about. She gulps, suddenly very uncomfortable. Mrs. Schuester eyes Santana beadily. Her madwoman eyes sweep over Santana's whole body, from bare feet to bare head. Mrs. Schuester wears a very queer expression, as if she's seeing Santana anew.

"You and Mr. Puckerman aren't—?" Mrs. Schuester starts but doesn't finish. She bites her lower lip. "It's just that Ma Jones said you weren't feeling well the other day and—"

Santana isn't sure what Mrs. Schuester means.

She wets her lips. "I feel very well today, thank you, Mrs. Schuester," she manages.

Mrs. Schuester's face twitches as if it wants to make a pleasant expression but doesn't know how. "Mr. Schuester and I have prayed for a very long time," Mrs. Schuester says contemplatively, as if Santana should know what she means and also for what they've prayed. She pauses for a just a second more before motioning for Santana to follow her again. "Come on now! No dallying. Mark down for another three reams of calico."

Santana does as Mrs. Schuester tells her to do.

(She doesn't know how to do anything else.)

* * *

><p>Mrs. Schuester detains Santana for another twenty minutes before declaring their work together done. However, she leaves Santana with one last chore to do before they part ways.<p>

"Deliver these ledgers to Mr. Adams at his business tent," Mrs. Schuester instructs, motioning to the lists of fabric Santana just wrote out for her. "Tell him please and thank you from me."

(Though Santana swallows and nods an okay, she doesn't suppose she will actually say anything to Mr. Adams, when the moment comes.)

(Rules are rules are rules, after all.)

Though she hasn't a pocket watch by which to check her estimate, Santana reckons that it must be nearly eleven o'clock in the morning, which means that the lunch bell will ring in one hour. She also reckons that, if she hurries to deliver Mrs. Schuester's ledger to Mr. Adams at the business tent, she still might have the time to find Brittany and make her confession before they must rejoin the company and prepare for the upcoming show.

Of course, Santana doesn't want to rush saying something so terribly important—sacred, even—to Brittany, but she also doesn't want to make Brittany wait much longer to hear the truth.

She scampers from the dressing tents, trailing along the far side of the sideshow through deep near noontime shadow. Her excitement carries her quickly. She so seldom has the pleasure of delivering good news to anyone, let alone to her one true love, whom she would do anything in the whole wide world to please.

(She can already see Brittany's smile in her mind.)

(She feels wonderfully giddy.)

Santana steps onto hotter grass, into direct sunlight, and makes haste toward the billboard partition dividing the midway from the white city. Color cascades over her skin, suffusing her in yellow, red, blue, violet, and aquamarine. All at once, she remembers that first day when Brittany showed her all the beautiful secret places of the circus—all her hidden rays of light—and feels somehow boundless inside and on the trail to something wonderful.

Except.

Crying.

Santana hears it just as she steps under the billboard advertising Mister Jesse St. James the Lion Tamer and His Miraculous Feats of Derring-do in the Face of Almost Certain Death at the Jaws of Wild Beasts of a Most Carnivorous Sort. At first, Santana doesn't register the crying for what it is—it seems just a strange sound, out of place amidst the relative silence of the deserted midway—but then Santana sees, and then Santana knows.

Quinn Fabray sits against one of the great timbers supporting the billboard, her pretty face buried in her hands. Her shoulders wrack and her skirt fans out around her like a handkerchief dropped onto the floor. Quinn's reporter's ledger and pencil lay just a few feet in front of her; she's scribbled out the first page in the ledger with angry, haphazard strokes.

She sobs and looks like a glass girl just on the verge of breaking.

Without meaning to, Santana remembers that part in Mr. Carroll's book when Alice sits down and begins to cry, letting so many tears that she nearly drowns herself in a sea of them. Now, Santana thinks Quinn might be a bit of an Alice: a girl with a problem so vast and deep that she can't see anything but it and can't manage to catch her breath.

(Santana knows how Quinn feels—or she did know two weeks ago before she ever joined the circus and met such a person as Brittany Pierce.)

Immediately, Santana stops where she stands; she couldn't keep running if she wanted to do it. She draws to a halt just a few feet away from where Quinn crouches, pausing under a long expanse of orange and red light. Quinn hears Santana, of course, and looks up, her pretty face crumpled into the most tragic expression Santana thinks she's ever seen.

She sits beneath a splay of blue, water to Santana's fire.

Before Santana can stop herself, she blurts out, "I'm sorry you have to marry Arthur Adams."

It breaks the rules for Santana to say such a thing—it's foolish, and she ought not to be so bold.

For once, Quinn doesn't seem to mind Santana's impertinence, though. She gives a terse laugh, devoid of mirth. "I am, too," she admits, trying to choke back her sobs.

(It might just be the most honest thing Quinn has ever said to Santana.)

(Or even to anyone, maybe.)

Now that Santana has stilled, she can get a good look at Quinn, whose eyes are pink and small from tears and face wet and drawn from grieving. As Quinn speaks to Santana, she tries to straighten out her mouth, but she can't seem to keep her lips from quivering.

Quinn is one of the prettiest girls Santana has ever seen, even weeping.

If Santana knew Quinn better, she might offer to hold Quinn, like she did Brittany yesterday in the wood. As it is, Santana shuffles her feet awkwardly in the grass. She hasn't any comfort to offer Quinn Fabray. After all, if a father says his daughter must marry, what choice does the daughter have but to do it? She must.

"It isn't just the wedding, though."

It surprises Santana that Quinn would keep talking. Santana starts at the sound of Quinn's voice but says nothing, allowing Quinn to go on. Quinn looks up at the billboards billowing above them, attempting to stymie her tears, and lets out another wilted, hapless sort of laugh.

"I know I shouldn't care because it doesn't matter," she says, grabbing at her skirt with angry fists, "but that dog Remington is sharking my story!"

Quinn glances at Santana as if she expects Santana to say something, but Santana doesn't know what to say. She stares at Quinn until Quinn finds more words.

"I've always known that Daddy would have me marry one of his business associates," Quinn admits. "I had just hoped that I might"—her voice cracks like a fault line—"that I might have something to show before—for—"

Her words dissolve into fresh sobs, and she rocks forward, clutching at her heart. It's a kind of sobbing that feels like swallowing shards of glass—Santana knows it from when Abuela died, and Papa, and also from when she thought that Brittany Pierce could never return her love.

"I'll give you an interview."

Santana surprises herself with her own boldness. It's an empty gesture, she knows, but what else can she do? She hates to see anyone cry, and especially a girl as beautiful as Quinn Fabray. Somehow, Quinn seems like someone who ought to be untouchable.

(It isn't right that the girl who doesn't even work at the circus should be so circus-lonely.)

Quinn looks up from her hands. She stares at Santana with a heartsick sort of seeing.

For Quinn's attention, a blush creeps over Santana's skin. Santana ought not to be so bold—not when someone like Quinn is so far above someone like her, not when there are rules, not when Quinn didn't even want to interview Santana before, when she had the chance.

"—if you like, I mean," Santana mumbles, no longer sure where to look.

Though Santana expects Quinn to reject the suggestion right away, Quinn doesn't. Instead, Quinn offers Santana a hopeless kind of smile, ducking her head in a grateful nod.

"Thank you," Quinn says, straightening up a bit, "but I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good." She wipes her nose along her sleeve. "Even if I were to publish one story with the A.P., I'd never have the chance to publish another, you see. If I marry Arthur at this age, there's nothing for me but—," her sentence trails away. After a second, her lip quivers again, and she shakes her head, clearing cobwebs. She fixes Santana with a very serious look. "It's better not to ever have the thing you most want than it is to have it once before it's taken away from you, don't you think?"

She speaks in an unaffected way, as if she had asked a superfluous kind of question, like _Do you suppose Oklahoma Territory will ever become a state of the Union?_ or _How is a raven like a writing desk?_—the kinds of things about which one might prattle to a friend over tea.

Hers isn't just a superfluous question, though.

Santana feels an ache for her. She knows what Quinn wants her to say, of course, but somehow she doesn't think she can say it because after meeting Brittany—after kissing Brittany and holding her and after everything they've done together at the circus—it would feel too much like a lie to tell Quinn that there's some sort of value in never knowing happiness, no matter how short its duration.

Santana knows differently now.

So she makes a decision.

She takes a few steps forward, cautiously, as one would in approaching a skittish animal, holding Quinn's gaze the whole time. Once she shares Quinn's space, she crouches down, covering Quinn's hand with her own upon the grass.

It's the first time she's touched Quinn. It's something Santana ought not to do, not without permission, not like this. People like her and people like Quinn don't touch each other.

Quinn's pulse feels quick and flighty under Santana's palm. Though it shouldn't surprise her to find Quinn made from skin and bones just like any other person, somehow it does. Quinn feels just like a frightened girl. Neither she nor Santana breathes much.

Their fingers tangle together, light and dark, against the earth.

Santana offers Quinn what she hopes is her most reassuring smile. She stares into Quinn's tear-sore hazel eyes and doesn't hesitate when she speaks.

"You know," she says softly, "just because somebody says you're married, it doesn't mean that you are. You have to want it, too. Somebody really smart told me that once."

The ghost of a smile curls Quinn's lips but only for the briefest second before Quinn collapses into more sobbing. She holds tightly to Santana's hand and cries and cries.

Santana doesn't move.

* * *

><p>There are few things that will make a person feel more helpless than watching a stranger sob.<p>

Santana clings to Quinn's hand, staring at her, but doesn't dare to touch Quinn any more than she already is or even to speak to the poor girl. Santana knows that if Brittany were here, Brittany might pet Quinn's hair or rub Quinn's back, but Santana isn't Brittany and there are rules and other things, as well—and maybe that's why after what seems like a long while, Quinn straightens up again and hastily wipes her eyes.

She swallows down what must be a great lump in her throat. "I'm sorry," she says, perhaps more to herself than to Santana. "I didn't mean to—I shouldn't have—"

"It's all right—," Santana tries to say, but, apparently, it isn't.

Quinn shakes her head and pulls her hand away from Santana. She wipes furiously at her eyes and reaches for her castoff ledger and pencil.

"I'm sure you have work to do," Quinn says in a clipped voice.

(She won't look at Santana.)

(She's trapped behind that same high wall, like Mr. Perrault's Sleeping Beauty encased about by thorns.)

Quinn snatches her belongings up from the grass and forces herself to her feet, all but tripping over her pretty Gibson skirts. She smoothes back her hair and wipes her eyes one last time. Her face still shines, wet and soft from tears; her mouth looks angry, but her eyes look sad. She clutches her ledger to her breast.

"You oughtn't to dawdle," Quinn snaps, and Santana would feel afraid of her, except that her jaw quivers just a bit when she speaks.

Santana doesn't bother to stand up from the grass just yet. "Yes, miss," she says, looking down to her own hand, still flatted upon the earth.

Quinn nods, satisfied with Santana's deference, turning on her heel and stalking away, back toward the white city. It should seem strange that a girl who tries to make herself appear so big and powerful would actually be so small and not, but Santana understands the contradiction, she thinks.

(She sees and she knows and she knows.)

* * *

><p>By the time Santana delivers Mrs. Schuester's ledger to Ken—he takes the list from her at the door to the business tent, so Santana never actually sees Mr. Adams himself at all—she finds that she has only a half-hour remaining until lunch, which is hardly enough time to declare true love to the most perfect girl in the world, she figures.<p>

Now that she doesn't have a secret to tell right away, Santana finds herself in a strange sort of humor, half of her heart high and floating like a balloon, giddy with thoughts of Brittany, and half of it anchored down, still troubled by the anguished look Quinn Fabray wore when Santana found her under the billboards.

(In such a world where a girl can have the thing she wants most—in secret—torn away from her in an instant, Santana vows to keep close to Brittany forever and ever, no matter what.)

It puzzles Santana that so much happiness and sadness can happen at a single place, and particularly at a place as encapsulated as the circus. It seems strange to her that she herself can feel so carefree when someone else—and especially a someone else as important as Quinn Fabray—should feel so miserable at the exact same time.

Part of Santana wonders if she and Quinn didn't somehow exchange fortunes, the princess and the pauper, like in Mr. Twain's book.

It strikes Santana that it might not be so terrible that Quinn would have to marry Arthur if only Mr. Remington hadn't appeared to ruin Quinn's story, too. If Quinn could just have one perfect thing, then maybe she would feel all right with all her many other things that are so far from perfect.

(By whatever happy chance, Santana found her own perfect thing—her own perfect person—without having to do any searching for her at all, really.)

Deep in contemplation, Santana fails to mind her surroundings.

She collides with someone, hard, coming around the corner of a tent row, headed toward the mess.

"Watch it, ladybird!"

Puck.

Puck all wet.

It surprises Santana to feel the slickness on Puck's skin and to see beads of water clinging to his hair, as would dew to morning grass. At first Puck regards Santana with the same sort of animal wariness with which he's met her for the past few days, petulance and distance behind his eyes, but then he seems to catch sight of her face, scrunched up with confusion, and something about his demeanor changes.

Half his idiot smile creeps onto his face.

"You're all wet," Santana starts.

"Oh," Puck says, "I just got back from the showers. Bath day, ladybird." He chucks her elbow and suddenly looks a bit more devilish. "I take it you haven't had your turn yet."

Santana shakes her head. "I haven't," she admits. "But maybe I'll go take my turn before lunch."

Puck nods. "There weren't nobody in there when I had my shower just now," he reports. "You'll have to hurry, though."

"I will," Santana assures him, confident that she can shower in less than a half-hour now that she has memorized the routine for doing so. A thought occurs to her. Then, "We don't happen to own a towel, do we?"

Her question, though simple, seems to take Puck aback and dissolve the last traces of his wariness. His posture changes. He jolts, straightens up, and peers at Santana, curious at something about her, like she's a new creature to him. When next he speaks, his voice sounds honey-soft.

"We don't," he admits. He wets his lips, tentative. "Would you like for me to buy us one, though?"

(Now it's Santana who starts.)

"Oh," she says, flustered that Puck would ask her opinion. No one has ever much cared for Santana's input about shopping before. "Only if it's not too much trouble."

Something lights behind Puck's eyes—it looks strangely like gratitude. All of a sudden, Puck seems like both a little boy and a grown man at once. "We can budget for it, if you like, ladybird," he offers. "I can supply a nickel from my savings, and then we can each put in two pennies from our next paychecks."

He seems weirdly excited at the prospect of buying a towel for their household, as if the very idea of doing so thrills him. His gaze shifts from Santana's eyes to her lips, and his own mouth curls into his most genuine sort of waiting smile.

"Once Mr. Adams makes good on his notes payable," says Santana, only half-joking.

Puck nods, still smiling. "Right," he says.

(Santana has never known a boy so happy to part with his money.)

* * *

><p>Somewhere between Puck and the showers, Santana gets back to thinking about Brittany. It's Brittany as she lets down her belts and sashes, Brittany when she stands on tiptoe upon the wooden stool, Brittany as she fills the colander, Brittany as she soaps, and Brittany as she rinses.<p>

Santana sings to herself as she bathes.

_I'm in love with a sweet little girlie  
><em>_Only one  
><em>_Only one_

_I meet her each morning nice and early,  
><em>_rain or sun,  
><em>_rain or sun_

_To work we go walking together,  
><em>_just as gay as can be  
><em>_We're truly two birds of a feather,  
><em>_just my one little girl and me_

* * *

><p>Satisfied that she no longer stinks of lake water, Santana wrings out her hair, dresses, and sets off back toward the camp. She hasn't heard the lunch bell yet and wonders how much time she has left before it will ring.<p>

As she goes along, she hums the same song that she sang in the shower stall and tries, again, to think through what she might say to Brittany after the matinee, recalling all the best speeches she's read from Misters Scott and Shakespeare concerning love.

So deep does Santana carry away into thought, imagining how she'll hold Brittany's hand and look into Brittany's eyes as she makes her confession, that she almost thinks she's imagined it when she actually happens upon Brittany sitting under a lone shingle oak tree.

Brittany has one elephant blanket covering her lap and the other two blankets bunched up behind her. The myriad pieces of a single sewing kit fan out around her. Before she sees Santana, she frowns at her project, almost distraught. After she sees Santana, she smiles, wide and true.

"Hey, darlin'!"

(Will Santana ever not blush at her call?)

"Hi, BrittBritt," Santana grins, drawing closer. "How's the work? Have you nearly finished with it? It will be time for lunch soon, I think."

Brittany's face falls the instant Santana mentions sewing. She glances between Santana and the embroidery, her needle paused halfway through the heavy velveteen blanket.

"I didn't finish as much as I should have," Brittany confesses. "Mr. Remington stopped me after I got back from the dressing tent and wanted to interview me for his article." She pouts. "He talked to me for a long time and only just left a few minutes ago."

"Golly, Britt," Santana says. "I'm sorry."

She mirrors Brittany's pout, sympathetic, and sits down on the grass in front of Brittany. Latticework shadows from the oak's branches crisscross her skin, and the grass feels cool beneath her legs. Without thinking, she reaches forward and sets her hand on Brittany's knee, massaging it.

Brittany gives a one-shouldered shrug. "It's not your fault," she says honestly.

"I know, but I'm still sorry for you," Santana says, rubbing over Brittany's knee with her thumb. A thought strikes her. "You're not the only one who doesn't like having Mr. Remington at the circus, you know. I just happened upon Quinn Fabray. It upset her very much that Mr. Remington has come to shark her story for the A.P."

"Really?" Brittany says, interested but not surprised.

Santana nods. "I don't think I like any fellow who makes you so fretful, Britt," she says, concerned at the way Brittany can't seem to stop frowning at her work. She continues to stroke at Brittany's kneecap. "Are you okay?"

Brittany gives another one-shouldered shrug, as if to say she doesn't know. "Mrs. Schuester will tell Daddy that I haven't finished my chores," she says forlornly. Her brow furrows as she looks down at the blanket in her lap and finds it woefully incomplete for beadwork.

"Oh, Britt," Santana says, deepening her pout.

She can see the worry starting to set in Brittany's features and feels a pang because Brittany's troubles always hurt her more than her own do somehow. She knows that Brittany is right, of course: If Mrs. Schuester discovers that Brittany didn't finish the project, it will mean trouble for Brittany of a sort that Santana doesn't particularly like to consider.

If Santana could, she would do all of Brittany's chores for her. Unfortunately, Santana would never be able to finish all the embroidering before lunch, no matter how quick her hand. She flusters, wanting more than anything to help Brittany but not knowing how to do it. She hates it when Brittany feels sad or worried or—worst of all—not good enough.

(That such a wonderful person as Brittany shouldn't know just how wonderful she really is somehow breaks Santana's heart.)

Santana scrambles for something to do to make Brittany feel better.

Her eyes light on something familiar in the grass.

A spool of red thread.

"Close your eyes," she bids, breathless.

Brittany does as Santana tells her, perfectly trusting.

Santana looks around at Brittany's sewing supplies, searching over several more spools of thread, a bead bag, and even a long, steel needle embedded in the ground, until finally she spots what she's looking for amidst the other detritus and snatches it up from the grass.

If right-handed scissors weren't invented by the same devil who sits on her shoulder, Santana will be even more damned than she already is.

She struggles to maneuver the scissors around the thread and then struggles even more to wield them properly. Several times, the scissors slip, and she fails to cut the thread, the blades ineffectual in her awkward grip.

When Brittany tried this same trick for Santana's sake, she managed it so easily. Try as she may, Santana can't seem to muster Brittany's special kind of grace.

Brittany must hear Santana fumbling because after a moment she asks, "Are you all right out there, darlin'?" a funny twinge in her voice.

"Just a second, Britt," Santana promises, only just managing to cut the thread. She grins, pleased with herself. Her smile steeps through her voice. "Give me your hand."

Brittany gasps.

(She sounds surprised.)

The faintest smile starts to curl at Brittany's lips, though Brittany obviously tries to smooth out her expression and not seem too hopeful, lest she somehow expect the wrong thing.

She doesn't expect the wrong thing, though.

When Brittany proffers up her right hand, Santana is almost sure that she does it on purpose just because she's clever and wonderful and the most precious person in the world.

"Other one," Santana instructs, adoring.

Brittany fully grins now, so widely that she shows her teeth, and her whole countenance seems to shine. When she offers her left hand to Santana, her fingers tremble.

With far less deftness than Brittany had when fitting her with a thread ring, Santana loops the thread around Brittany's ring finger, bumbling to put it over twice and work it into a sound knot, trembling herself after a moment. She fidgets the knot into place, feeling clumsy and stupid but also golden just from the way that Brittany smiles at her.

_I love you_, she thinks.

"There," she says.

At her word, Brittany opens her eyes, gaze darting from her own finger to Santana's face. Brittany bends her finger at the knuckle, testing her new "jewelry" for its elasticity. Everything about her seems light.

"What's this for, darlin'?" she asks, reverent.

Santana searches. "It's a promise," she says honestly.

She expects Brittany to ask her about what kind of promise she means—honestly, Santana doesn't know, not fully anyway, not about something so important and lasting—but Brittany doesn't. Instead, Brittany's smile and eyes turn soft.

"Thank you," Brittany says.

She never quite does what Santana expects.

(Santana didn't realize how much she loved surprises until she realized how much she loves Brittany.)

The invisible string tied at Santana's heart gives what feels like one-thousand tugs at once, and Santana's cheeks heat. Her head dips of its own volition. "May I kiss you, Britt?" she asks, already halfway to Brittany's lips.

"Yes, please," Brittany says.

And so Santana does.

Brittany smiles into the kiss and Santana does, too, and at the moment when their mouths fully meet, Santana doesn't think that she's ever felt happier or brighter. She nudges their noses together and chins, shifting the shape of their kiss and the angle of it, feeling Brittany out in new ways. The sensation of Brittany's lips against hers sends a warm sort of shiver through Santana's body. Brittany's smile widens until finally she and Santana break apart, dizzy.

"I'll help you with your fancywork after lunch," Santana promises, reaching for Brittany's ringed hand and setting it in her own lap. "I don't care what Mrs. Schuester says about it."

Brittany smiles. "Really?" she says, giving Santana another peck on the lips.

Santana nods. "If she says aught to me, I'll tell her fiddlesticks and have done with it," she boasts because, at the moment, she feels it to be true—she could very well say such things to Mrs. Schuester without as much as a second thought of it.

(She could do anything for Brittany.)

"Thank you," Brittany says again, breathless.

The girls grin at each other, and the lunch bell rings.

(Honestly, Santana couldn't have timed everything better.)

* * *

><p>Santana helps Brittany gather up her sewing supplies and the elephant blankets before the two girls head back toward the heart of camp together. They deposit Brittany's materials outside the front door to the Pierce family tent, but Brittany doesn't go inside because she doesn't want to wake her father. With linked pinky fingers, she and Santana jog to the mess area and enter it via the back path just beyond the chuck wagon.<p>

Almost immediately, they happen upon Ma Jones and Ken together, the former scolding the latter, brandishing her wooden spoon with such righteous aplomb that even old General Grant would be impressed to see her, were he still alive and here at Mr. Adams' circus today.

Ma looks like an archangel, full of justice, beautiful in her ferocity.

Ken, by comparison, looks like the lowliest worm in Hell.

He cowers before Ma Jones, his undersized bowler hat crushed between regretful hands, his shoulders hunched as he seems to try to sink below the surface of the very earth. He flinches at Ma's every word and acts sorrier than Santana felt when she first awakened in the morning.

Ma prods at his bulbous belly with her wooden spoon.

"I know what you said," she admonishes, "but I won't have none of that flap-jawing' up in my kitchen! You are still dog drunk, Ken, and you stink of booze, but that's between y'all and Jesus—what I care about is that you was supposed to be on watch at the chuck, but instead you decided to drink that beer like it was water and cheap as piss, and now we're down two half-barrels and ten biscuits out of that wagon! I don't know how Mr. Adams puts you in charge of nothing, what with your being a bigger fool than you even look and selfisher than any man of your great size has a right to be!"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, ma'am."

If Santana didn't know better, she would say that Ken looked like he was about to cry.

Brittany and Santana tiptoe around the commotion, careful not to let Ma Jones see them and desperate to keep straight faces should Ken happen to glance their way. Santana avoids looking directly at Brittany because she knows that if she does so, she'll laugh and thereby incriminate them. She ought to feel guilty for allowing Ken to suffer for her sins, but somehow she can't fuss about it.

The girls make it into the mess pit proper before Brittany starts giggling, and Santana does, too.

They're still laughing when they takes seats on the grass on a low hillock just beyond the tables. Brittany squeezes Santana's finger.

"I feel like I ought to do penance," Santana says. She tries to sound sincere, but she can't stop smiling.

Brittany hums a happy note, grinning just as well. "But why, Santana? You heard Ma Jones: Ken's the one who's done wrong," she purrs, looking more precious than any troublemaking person has a right to.

Santana laughs. "I'll go get us some lunch. Is that a good penance?"

"The best penance," Brittany agrees, only it sounds like something else.

Color floods Santana's cheeks. She glances at the thread rings on her and Brittany's fingers, her own slightly faded, Brittany's still bright red, both of them perfect, and especially together. "All right," she says. "I'll be right back—promise."

Brittany helps Santana to her feet, though she herself remains sitting on the grass. "Okay, darlin'. I'll wait for you," she returns.

(What she says feels like a million things, really—all of them, all of them good.)

* * *

><p>Santana returns to her and Brittany's place with two plates of dumplings with gravy, greens, two tin cups, and a single fork. She finds Brittany lying belly-down on the hillock, her back turned to Santana and feet kicked up in the air above her.<p>

At first, Santana thinks that Brittany might be sunbathing—catlike—but then she realizes that something in the grass has Brittany's attention. As soon Santana draws closer, she sees what the something is: namely, two queen butterflies with brilliant roan wings fluttering over a clump of yellow sneezeweed.

The butterflies flit about each other, bumping together mid-flight as they hover about the plant. When Santana listens closely, she hears Brittany whispering to them.

"I hope you're not fighting," Brittany says fervently. "You really ought to be kind to each other. Do butterflies know manners? Maybe you're kissing," she muses. "Kissing is nice—well, kissing Santana is nice. The nicest, actually."

(Santana feels a firm tug on her heart.)

(She gasps without meaning to do it.)

Brittany hears Santana behind her and lifts up her head. Though anyone else might feel so, Brittany doesn't seem at all self-conscious, despite the fact that she must know that Santana caught her dreamy butterfly talk. She greets Santana with a smile and flits her feet in the air, absentminded.

"Hey, darlin'," she says, still flat on the ground.

"Hey," Santana says back, stupid.

For a moment, both girls stare at each other, dumb with affection, but after several seconds, Brittany bites her lip. "What?" she asks slyly.

Santana's heart flutters. She searches to explain exactly what makes this particular Brittany moment so endearing to her. "It's just—," she starts. "It's just—almost nothing surprises you, does it?"

Brittany grins and bites her lip. She nods. "Almost nothing except you," she says, just so. She searches Santana's expression. "Why? What's on your mind, darlin'?"

"My favorite book," Santana admits. When Brittany stares at her, waiting for her to say more, Santana elaborates, "It's—it's about a little girl who goes to live at a boarding school. The headmistress is called Miss Minchin." Santana pauses before adding, "Miss Minchin is a lot like Mrs. Schuester, actually."

Brittany scrunches up her nose. "You mean only happy when she's cross?"

(Santana feels a sweet pang play through her chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

She laughs, still hovering over Brittany. "The crossest," she affirms.

Brittany looks up at Santana, learning about Santana's favorite book in the same way one might learn the topography of a room she was visiting for the very first time—which is to say, carefully and by paying attention to everything that makes the room different from what's familiar to her.

(Brittany is the kind of person who revels in the quiet wonder of a new room, Santana thinks.)

Brittany's gaze moves between Santana's two eyes, then down to the curve of Santana's shy smile, and then back up to Santana's eyes again.

"Well, what about the little girl in your book?" she asks, infinitely curious.

Santana blushes and sits down in the grass beside Brittany. The butterflies flutter at her intrusion but still hang close to the sneezeweed. Santana offers Brittany her plate and their lone fork to start the meal and then shrugs, bashful.

"Well," she starts, "the little girl's father loves her very much and provides for her well—he's a rich, young officer in the army—only it so happens that he loses his fortune and dies in India, leaving his little girl penniless and without a friend in the world. After that, Miss Minchin acts terrible to the little girl, and the little girl escapes into the stories she reads in books and into her imagination. She imagines so often and so fancifully that nothing really surprises her when it happens, no matter how strange it is."

Brittany wears a soft, adoring smile. She hasn't stopped staring at Santana yet. "The little girl is a lot like you, isn't she, darlin'?" Brittany says thoughtfully.

Santana's ears pink. "I used to think so," she admits, ducking her head, "but now I think she's more like you." Her secret rises to her throat, and she speaks around it. "That's why I l-like her so well."

Now it's Brittany who blushes. She grins and digs into her dumplings with the fork, only she doesn't take a bite yet—just looks away from Santana out of modesty and something else.

"How does she end up?" Brittany asks after a minute spent poking around at her food. "The little girl, I mean?"

Santana shrugs, still hot in the face, even though neither she nor Brittany looks at each other now. "She makes a friend who takes care of her," she mumbles.

Brittany looks up at Santana then, a familiar queer perspicacity in her cornflower blue and specks of gilt. "You've never talked about your favorite book before," she says, hushed. She sounds grateful to hear Santana talk about it now, like Santana doing so is some sort of gift.

Santana feels very warm inside. She squirms where she sits. "I suppose I haven't," she concedes.

"Why not?" Brittany asks, not accusatory but interested.

Though Santana had never considered the matter before, at Brittany's word, she searches inside herself and instantly knows the answer to Brittany's question. She reaches for a tuft of grass and pulls it up by the roots, fidgety, trying to formulate her words.

"Have you ever been very fond of something, but then had it too often and then not liked it anymore?" she ventures. Brittany nods, and Santana continues, "Well, I suppose I didn't want to talk about my favorite book or think of it too much because I didn't want it to stop being special," she confesses. Speaking her concern aloud makes it sound foolish. She looks up from the grass at Brittany, embarrassed of herself. "That's not how magic works, though, is it, BrittBritt?"

Brittany considers Santana's deduction, contemplative and serene. She still hasn't taken a bite of her lunch yet. After a long while, she says, "Circus magic, maybe—but not real magic, no."

"Real magic?" Santana asks, scrunching up her face.

Brittany nods. "Our kind of magic," she explains, reaching for Santana's hand upon the grass.

(Red thread overlaps red thread.)

(Santana's heart squeezes in her chest.)

At Brittany's touch, the moment turns urgent, and Santana finds she wants nothing more than to kiss Brittany deep and slow. She knows that Brittany wants the same thing from the way Brittany's eyes turn darker blue. The want pulses between them.

All the same, however much Santana wants to write out love on Brittany's lips and in the heat of Brittany's mouth, she can't—not when she and Brittany sit just a few feet away from the whole company, where anyone could see them kiss—so rather than do it, Santana offers Brittany her best smile, and Brittany returns the look.

"Can we read your favorite book together someday?" Brittany asks suddenly.

Santana's throat tightens just from thinking about _someday_ with Brittany. When Santana next speaks, her voice sounds scratchy for it. "I'll teach you, BrittBritt," she promises.

Brittany gives Santana's hand a squeeze. "I'd like that very much," she says.

(Brittany is the kind of person who never forgets important things, and, when Santana is with her, Santana is that kind of person, too.)

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana make it through very little lunch before the mess bell rings, and they both jolt, confused.<p>

It's far too early for lunch to have ended already.

They look up from their plates to see what's afoot beside the hearth. Almost immediately, they find the source of the disruption: Ken standing atop a vegetable crate. Ma Jones waits just beside him, holding the hook she uses to ring the mess bell. The whole circus company mutters, surprised that Ken would interrupt their meal—and especially when he's already addressed them once today.

"Quiet down!" Ken shouts, looking smug with himself for doing it. He waits until everyone complies with his order. Only after they do so does he address them, "Listen up! Now, today's the Fourth of July and we've got a spectacular to run! Missus Schuester has spent all of last week sewing new costumes for you lot, and you'll wear them today instead of your knight duds. The choreography during the sketch will run the same, except the black knights will be Injuns, and the blue knights'll be pioneers. The ladies will be frontier women and Injun princesses. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," choruses the company, not sounding particularly enthused.

"Good," Ken says, as self-satisfied as if he had just won some argument. "Now, Mr. Adams has made arrangements for us to have a dance inside the big top tonight after the show, and not just with us but with the townsfolk from Ackley. He invited the whole town. After the dance, we'll set off fireworks. To my boys, you all know which ones of 'ya are on duty for that fuss. So what says everyone to that?"

This time, the company cheers, thrilled at the prospect of such a diversion.

Santana's own heart leaps in her chest.

(She can't help but recall the last time when the circus had a dance and the way that she and Brittany fit together, spinning—)

"All right, then," Ken gruffs, motioning for the company to quiet down again. "Well, before any of you get smart ideas, let me tell you: Mr. Adams made it very clear that anyone who treats our guests discourteously or harasses the gillies will be off the list faster than a mule kick, you understand? Give the townsfolk plenty of space, and don't try to mix with them."

"Who would want to?" calls a voice that sounds suspiciously like Puck's.

The company chuckles, but Ken looks annoyed.

"No funny business!" he warns, shaking a pudgy finger at the crowd.

"Yes, sir," comes the chorus.

Brittany and Santana meet each other's eyes and grin.

"Save me a dance tonight, darlin'?" Brittany asks.

Santana smiles wider. "As many dances as you want," she says earnestly, though what she really means to say is "As many dances as there are," of course.

* * *

><p>After Ken addresses the company, everyone begins to disperse for the morning fair, even though it's perhaps a bit early for them to do so. Brittany and Santana remain on their hillock for just a while longer—fitting in a few more bites of lunch and a few more minutes spent in each other's company—before they too bus their plates to the washtubs, ready to prepare for the show.<p>

As they set out from the mess pit, they pass by Mr. Remington approaching Mr. Evans.

"Excuse me, good fellow," says Mr. Remington in his deep, booming, boastful voice. "Would you be disposed to perhaps sit for an interview—?"

"Haven't the time for it," Mr. Evans says quickly. Then, tersely, "God bless."

And he departs.

Mr. Remington seems very put out by Mr. Evans' dismissal; his lips tighten on his face, and he clutches hard to his ledger. His already deeply furrowed brow furrows even deeper. He is a man unaccustomed to having anyone refuse him.

Immediately, Mr. Remington searches for another potential interviewee, looking around at the circus folk passing him on either side, but no one meets his eyes—not even Brittany or Santana, who dodge him like the rest.

Of course, Mr. Adams instructed the company that they ought to make Mr. Remington feel welcome at the circus and that they should be forthcoming with him when he questioned them for his report. However, Mr. Adams also instructed the company—by way of Ken—that they should put on a perfect show today and threatened everyone that he would strike any man from the lists who happened to miss a mark.

Even to Santana, who still knows much less concerning the circus than most of the other company members do, it seems that the latter order trumps the former one.

(All the same, Santana can't help but think that the company's unwillingness to stop for Mr. Remington has less to do with obedience than it has to do with privacy.)

* * *

><p>Between last night's circus ending early and Santana staying awake into the wee hours of the morning, it feels as if a considerable amount of time has passed since last she performed on the midway. Of course, Santana can't say that she particularly missed the midway at all. Indeed, she feels a great impatience about sitting for today's fair—or perhaps, more accurately, about sitting anywhere away from Brittany.<p>

Though Mr. Adams put in a word to Ken yesterday to order Santana new tarot cards, the delivery doesn't seem to have arrived yet; Santana's sign still announces her as "MADAME ROSSETTI, GYPSY FORTUNETELLER: Reader of Both Palms."

Ken says nothing to Santana as she sidles into her chair. He seems rather preoccupied with the upcoming spectacular and keeps glancing toward the big top in the distance.

For her part, Santana takes to telling very detailed fortunes in the hopes that her doing so will help to pass the time until the matinee more quickly.

She "prophesies" to a young farmer about how he ought to search for a cow with a particular kind of spots—"It must have a star, a rain cloud, and a circle no bigger than your fist," she tells him, "and all on its left flank"—and raise it for the county fair, feeding it on the best stuff, if he wants to win a grand prize.

The farmer listens to Santana's words with rapt attention, repeating them over and over again just a beat behind her, trying to memorize them for himself. His older brother stands at his shoulder, nodding intently, similarly focused.

Next, Santana "sees" in the palm of a jovial businessman that if he searches in every corner of his office and under his bed at home and in his satchel and through all his pockets and beneath the bench of his buggy, he'll find his misplaced pocketbook—and especially if he searches every place twice and does so thoroughly.

"So I ought to search the buggy when?" he asks, eyes twinkling.

"After your pockets," Santana repeats, thick in her grandmother's accent, "—and make sure to search every pocket in all your slacks and jackets."

"What about my waistcoats?" the man prods.

Santana pretends to consider for a moment. She squints at the businessman's palm—as boringly pink and nondescript as every other palm she's read at the circus—feigning as if she must really search for her answer in its landscape.

After a minute, she gives a slow shake of her head.

"Only the blue one," she says wisely.

"My blue waistcoat?"

"Yes."

(The man looks thoroughly impressed that Santana would know what color waistcoat he owns.)

After his reading, he makes it ten full steps away from Santana's gazebo before he realizes that he's wearing a blue waistcoat today and laughs most raucously.

He spins where he stands and wags a finger in her direction. "You sly devil girl!" he says. _"Bon spectacle, Madame Rossetti!"_

* * *

><p>In the wake of her successful joke, Santana feels very pleased with herself but only until a familiar but unwelcome person appears at the front of her line: none other than Mr. Roderick Remington, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.<p>

"Good afternoon. How do you do, Madame?" he says in his deep, boastful voice. He tips the brim of his hat to her and sits down in the open chair in front of her table without her inviting him to do so first. "I saw your last reading, and I must say that I'm very impressed. You're quite the well-behaved little thing, aren't you?" he says, more sneering than smiling.

His voice sounds severely unctuous, and Santana finds that even though he complimented her, what he said was far from genuinely laudatory. There's a word he didn't say, though Santana heard it very well.

Santana eyes Mr. Remington warily but doesn't reply to him. Mr. Remington doesn't seem to notice her silence and goes on.

"Now," he says loudly, "I would like to ask you a few questions for the A.P. That would be all right, wouldn't it?"

At first, it surprises Santana that someone like Mr. Remington would ask her permission to do anything—the rules say that he doesn't have to do so, really—but then she realizes that Mr. Remington actually asks his question to Ken, who hovers just behind him. A strange expression passes over Ken's face. His beady eyes narrow, and his mouth turns taut. He seems to consider Mr. Remington's question with great scrutiny before he answers.

"I-I suppose," he says finally.

For his word, something seems to shift in the air, and even the small crowd of bystanders still surrounding Santana's gazebo appears to notice it. The throng titters, their interest piqued. Suddenly, Santana feels immensely nervous.

Ken stares at Santana, hard, a certain neediness written over his features. It isn't the same as how he usually looks at Santana when he just wants her to get on with a reading, _for cripes' sake_. In fact, it seems almost opposite of that—like he's willing Santana not to do something. Does he not want Santana to speak with Mr. Remington, even though he just gave his permission for her to do so?

If that's so, then for once Ken and Santana might find their desires in accord, as Santana herself most certainly doesn't want to give an interview to Mr. Remington, whom she doesn't trust one whit.

Of course, Santana realizes that it's strange for her to not trust Mr. Remington, as she hasn't ever spoken to the man and knows nothing about him more than what Mr. Adams told the company concerning his dispatch this morning.

Really, Mr. Remington seems at least falsely nice in the way that men like him can sometimes be when addressing girls like Santana—it's all in the rules, after all.

Really, Santana hasn't any reason to distrust Mr. Remington as she does.

Except.

This morning, Mr. Remington told the company that he'd like to learn their secrets.

But that isn't the way that the circus works.

Not when it comes to outsiders.

Not when it comes to gillies.

Santana remembers the hard looks that Rory and the other clown wore when Mr. Adams first introduced Mr. Remington to the circus folk, and something hardens in her belly. She finds that she doesn't want to tell Mr. Remington secrets—not her own and not anyone else in the company's, either.

The circus is a place where so many secrets pile on top of one another that a person can hardly tell the truth about one thing without compromising something or someone else.

No one asks questions, everyone tells lies.

(Santana can't betray the circus without betraying herself, too.)

Only as these thoughts occur to her does Santana realize that Ken isn't the only circus person watching her interactions with Mr. Remington. Kurt Hummel has stopped just outside Santana's gazebo along the midway pitch on his usual rounds; he stands at a gap in the crowd, holding his juggling pins in his hands without throwing them. He watches Santana with wide, worried eyes. His Adam's apple bobs in his throat.

Though Santana often observes Kurt walking up and down the midway past her gazebo during fairs, she's never seen him pause before it either for so long or so blatantly.

He wears a pretty purple vest and green knickers with ornate beadwork sewn into the seams and upon the breast pocket and looks like a marionette or a porcelain doll from Europe. He also looks scared beyond breathing that Santana might say the wrong thing to Mr. Remington.

Suddenly, everything feels too bright and too much.

"Very well!" booms Mr. Remington, turning over the first page in his ledger and preparing his pencil to write. He fixes Santana with a smarmy look. "Now, Madame, will you please kindly tell me your occupation with the circus?"

It's a profoundly foolish question—that's Santana's first thought. It's also a question that she feels disinclined to answer, though she knows that the rules require that she must.

She glances at Kurt and Ken, both hovering behind Mr. Remington. It occurs to her now that neither one of them wants her to answer Mr. Remington's question any more than she does. Her throat runs dry.

She glances at the marquee sign outside her booth but says nothing.

Mr. Remington follows her line of sight, and his face falls.

He makes a note in his ledger.

(Santana wonders if Mr. Remington is even a good reporter.)

"So you're a fortuneteller who reads... both palms... then?" Mr. Remington clarifies, clearly a bit flummoxed as to what Santana's sign implies. He squints.

Santana stares at him, biting her lips into her mouth. She can almost feel Kurt and Ken willing her not to speak. Knowing that she must answer Mr. Remington but not wanting to do so, she simply nods without elaboration.

Mr. Remington appears even more flummoxed than before. He adjusts himself in his chair. "So, Madame," he tries again, "how long have you been with the circus? You can't have been performing for so very many years?"

While Mr. Remington's first two questions only made Santana want to roll her eyes, this question actually startles her—mainly because however Santana answers it, she knows that she'll be wrong.

On the one hand, the rules mandate that Santana must tell Mr. Remington the truth.

(Nine days only.)

On the other hand, if Santana tells Mr. Remington the truth now, then all the people standing huddled about them will hear her do it, and it will spoil the circus magic that casts Santana's Madame Rossetti glamour.

(Nobody wants the newcomer to the circus to read his fortune, after all.)

"How do you mean?" Santana says, playing stupid.

She puts emphasis on her grandmother's accent and trips a bit over her words, as if they're unfamiliar to her. It's the first time Santana has ever pretended not to comprehend plain English when someone's spoken it to her, and she feels like a stranger to herself doing so.

Mr. Remington squints at Santana. "How—long—have—you—been—with—the—circus?" he repeats. He speaks very loudly and enunciates each word in the same way that Rachel does sometimes when she talks to Brittany. "You—seem—very—young."

Santana flusters.

Should she continue to feign that she doesn't understand what Mr. Remington means? Ken fidgets at Mr. Remington's side. He doesn't force Santana to do something that she doesn't want to do, as he would on any other occasion, but he also looks uncomfortable to see her failing to please a better.

Just then, a high, silk voice interrupts the conversation.

"She comes from the finest gypsy stock of Rome."

(Santana had almost forgotten about Kurt's presence altogether.)

"She's very accomplished," Kurt adds, selecting his words with carefulness, speaking with slight tremor, like the flitter of birds' wings, in his breath.

With the utmost caution, Kurt takes a step closer to Santana's table, so that he stands at Mr. Remington's left shoulder while Ken stands at the right. Kurt glances between Santana, Ken, and Mr. Remington with wide, gray eyes, checking that he has their attention, which he does. Santana can't help but notice how Kurt carries his juggling pins, with two in his right hand, two in his left hand, and one pinned under his armpit, all of them forgotten in his brave moment but situated around him almost like armor.

Mr. Remington stares at Kurt expectantly, but Kurt simply shrugs his shoulders and fakes an apologetic smile, as if to explain he doesn't know what to say more than that.

He doesn't know what to say more than that, considering that he knows nothing about Santana save for her billing information, which Ken hollers up and down the midway every morning and afternoon for the bally right where Kurt can hear it.

(Only after several seconds does Santana realize that Kurt never really answered Mr. Remington's question at all.)

When Mr. Remington looks to Santana again, hoping she might elaborate, Santana shrugs her shoulders, as well. Mr. Remington writes a brief note in his ledger. He opens his mouth to make another inquiry, but Ken cuts him off.

"You'll want to get to the big top in time to see the spectacular," Ken says gruffly. He sets a firm hand on Mr. Remington's shoulder, and Mr. Remington flinches at his touch. "The bell for the show should ring at any minute now."

Mr. Remington seems affronted at Ken's news. "Oh," he says dazedly, blinking through his heavy squint. "Oh. Of course," and, at Ken's further prompting, he rises from his chair.

The instant that he does so, the warning bell rings.

* * *

><p>Ken escorts Mr. Remington to the big top, leaving Kurt to tend Santana, as if she needs a sitter, even for just such a very short time before the show. Compliant to Ken's orders, Kurt hovers around while Santana gathers up her peacock-colored tablecloth and her tambourine. He seems not entirely certain as to how he should stand or where he should look.<p>

Once Santana has her things in hand, Kurt gestures to her. "Shall we?"

Despite the short distance between Santana's gazebo and their destination, it's still awkward going for Kurt and Santana, side by side. Even after all their shared revelries on the beachfront last night, they've have never said a word to each other yet and still don't say a word to each other all the way from the midway to the backstage. Rather, they exchange queer glances with each other from out of the corners of their eyes and keep an odd, discomfited pace, asynchronous.

Though Santana certainly feels grateful to Kurt for intervening during her interview with Mr. Remington, she still isn't sure if she likes Kurt very well or not.

(How could she be when they know nothing about each other?)

When they arrive at Santana's backstage area, Kurt offers Santana a strange, swift nod before ducking away to his own designated place. Santana watches him go through the rabble. He's a weird wisp of a boy and scared of something, though Santana doesn't know what that something is. Of course, Santana doesn't have long to think about Kurt or anything else for that matter before someone shouts something just behind her.

"Hey, missus!"

It's one of Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses.

At first, Santana isn't sure that the girl means to hail her—even though Santana has pretended to be married to Puck for almost a month in total now, counting her time spent in the Tenderloin district, she still isn't used to the title that goes along with her charade—so she stops where she stands and waits for the girl to beckon to her, if that's what the girl really means to do.

It is, and the girl does.

"Hey, Missus Puck! Come here so we can get you ready for the matinee!"

The girl motions for Santana to hurry over to where she and the other seamstresses stand just at the edge of the backstage area.

"We ain't got all day!"

After a second's hesitation, Santana does as the girl commands and crosses over to join the seamstresses. Almost immediately, the girl who called out to Santana and two other seamstresses take Santana by the elbows and lead her toward the ladies' dressing tent. The girls wear smiles that seem neither happy nor kind. They sling little knowing looks at one another over Santana's head.

Santana hasn't stood so close to these girls since her very first day at the circus, and now she finds that she doesn't particularly like to do it.

The girls hustle her inside the tent and steer her toward several costume boxes sitting propped open in the heart of the room.

"Stand here, girl," one of the seamstresses commands, pointing at what seems like a rather arbitrary spot upon the ground.

The other seamstresses push Santana into place, and she remains where they set her, not daring to move. Nerves jitter through her body, and she watches, worried, as the seamstresses begin to sift through the bundles of costumery in the boxes, still giggling to one another as they work.

As Santana watches the girls, it occurs to her that she doesn't yet know a thing about them or even any of their names. Of course, it also occurs to her that these girls don't know her real name, either.

(She isn't "Missus Puck.")

(_Lopez, Lopez, Lopez_.)

The truth is that, on the rare occasions when Santana thinks about them, most of Mrs. Schuester and Ma Jones' girls blear together in her mind, indistinguishable, all shabbily-dressed and caught up in pursuits as foreign to her as the bachelor cottage might seem to them.

Briefly, Santana wonders how these girls got to the circus—if they were born here, like Brittany, or if they had fathers or brothers or husbands or even fake-husbands, like hers, to bring them to work for Mr. Adams.

Honestly, Santana wouldn't know any one of the girls apart from the others by sight, except that some have darker complexions than others and one—Santana finds now—almost matches her own pigmentation, very nearly as light as she is.

(Santana wonders about the girl and about herself.)

"Okay, we got something for you," one of the seamstresses declares, standing up to reveal Santana's costume for the matinee.

Santana only sees a glimpse of brown and a flash of rainbow color before the three seamstresses surround her, overwhelming her senses. She feels their hands upon her body, measuring her up and fitting her costume into place. She hears the girls talking to one another—talking around her and about her—and still giggling. They smell like talc and tailor's chalk. Their fingers move nimbly but carelessly at their task.

Someone commands Santana to put her arms out, and she complies, helpless. Someone else lifts Santana's hair from the back of her neck, holding it up as yet another person pulls something rough and made of leather over her arms and onto her shoulders. Before Santana knows what's happening, another person—the first girl, maybe—fits something over her head, jamming it down a bit too hard onto her brow. Something tightens at Santana's waist, a sash of some sort. The tallest girl, the one who first hailed Santana in the backstage, looks down at Santana and smirks.

"Stand up straight now so we can get a look at you," she directs.

The three seamstresses peel away from Santana enough to check her over; they appraise their handiwork up and down.

"Uhm-hm," says one of them, holding her own chin and nodding slowly.

"She look like an Injun princess," another says.

"Girl, you got Injun in you?" says the first.

Santana doesn't have the chance to answer the question before the flaps to the ladies' dressing tent part and another group of Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses enter with some Sylvesteri Coterie girls in tow.

"Hey, you best get Miz Puckerman back outside before Miz Schuester has it in for you," the new girls warn, gesturing in the direction of the backstage.

"We ain't done her face paint yet," one of Santana's girls protest.

"Well, do it quick."

"Face paint?" Santana squeaks.

No one addresses Santana's concern; instead, her girls shuttle her away from the costume boxes and into a corner facing a full body mirror, stopping Santana just in front of it.

Though Santana has read many books featuring Indian characters—Mr. Fenimore Cooper seemed to like writing about Indians very much—she had never given any extended thought to what an Indian princess might look like before, excepting to wonder if the princess were pretty, as Mr. Fenimore Cooper described her. Now Mrs. Schuester's girls say that Santana looks like an Indian princess herself, and Santana still doesn't know what to think of it.

She just sees her own reflection in the mirror and stares.

The heavy, leather garment the girls pulled over Santana's arms and shoulders turns out to be a robe rather like a dressing gown, save, of course, for the material. The robe weighs several pounds and is made from rough, brown, untreated buckskin. It has fringes up the arms and at the hem. Though the robe reaches down past Santana's knees, it doesn't go all the way to the bottom of her skirt. It has beads and even little white, whittled bits of bone sewn to its front in an elaborate pattern that somehow reminds Santana of a field of vibrant wildflowers.

It doesn't seem like something Mrs. Schuester could have made, even if she had had all the time in the world to embroider it herself.

(Santana wonders if it isn't authentic, then.)

Despite its ornate design, the robe isn't the part of Santana's costume that most attracts her attention—mainly because it dulls in color compared to the headband encircling Santana's brow.

It's amazing what Mrs. Schuester has done with dyed chicken feathers, really.

The headband is made from striped fabric stretched around what Santana can only imagine is the bandeau of a hat. At the back of the headband stands a row of tall, proud goose feathers arranged like peacock plumes, each one nearly as long as Santana's forearm and dyed a different color of the rainbow, in blue, red, orange, green, yellow, and violet. So vibrant are the headband's colors that even patrons sitting in the very top row of the bleachers will be able to spot Santana the second she enters the big top, she's sure.

(Santana's grandmother would faint at the vulgarity of the headband, were she still alive to see the thing for herself.)

Santana's mouth falls open a bit as she takes in her own appearance in the mirror, but she doesn't have time to voice as much as a peep about it before one of Mrs. Schuester's girls sets hands on her face, shutting her jaw. The girl holds a small tin of black paint in her hand.

The paint both looks and smells suspiciously like boot blacking.

"Don't move, miz," the girl commands, situating herself right at Santana's eye level so that she can get a clear look at Santana's face.

In the next second, the girl daubs a little brush not dissimilar to the ones from Sam and Blaine's clown make up kits in her paint tin, gathering blacking on its bristles. She draws the brush to Santana's cheeks and begins to paint on them in quick, short strokes.

The brush bristles tickle Santana's skin, and the girl's nearness to Santana's eyes and lips unnerves Santana greatly. She's never had another girl except for Brittany this close to her before; she finds she doesn't know where to look at this stranger—or where not to look at her, as it were. She knots her hands together in front of her so tightly that she almost can't feel her own fingers.

"Hold still," the girl chides her.

Santana stiffens, breath catching at the back of her throat. She tries not to swallow too hard and not to think of anything in particular. Just as she begins to wonder how the girl is decorating her face, the girl pulls away and checks her up and down.

"There," the girl says definitively. She steps away from Santana, allowing everyone to get a good look at Santana's reflection in the mirror.

Two short, parallel strokes rather like equals signs adorn Santana's either cheek, each stroke about three inches in length. They make Santana look severe and somehow unlike herself. They're also noticeably uneven.

"Don't be pokey," one of Santana's handlers orders.

She apparently means that Santana ought not to dawdle because, in the next moment, she and the other seamstresses shove Santana toward the door to the dressing tent, herding Santana back outside into the bright sunlight and then in the direction of the big top.

Though Santana hadn't realized it inside the dressing tent, the show bell has already rung; the other women from her backstage area all crowd around the entrance to the big top, bedecked in their costumes for the spectacular. Someone shoves a flower into Santana's hand; it's small and pale pink, and Santana doesn't know the name for it.

"Get over here!" Ken snarls, spotting Santana from across the way.

(She hardly knows why it should be her fault that Mrs. Schuester's girls held her for too long in the dressing tent.)

Santana frowns.

At Ken's word, Mrs. Schuester's girls release Santana into the throng carelessly and amidst a chorus of giggles. "Don't let them Injun braves get you," one of the seamstresses says, only it doesn't sound like she means her advice helpfully at all. Santana stumbles in amongst the other female performers, disoriented.

(Ackley is a place where everything happens all in a rush.)

Before Santana knows it, she's jostling and bumbling into the ring, elbows and shoulders and a great clamor of noise all around her. Someone has obviously repaired the big top arc lamps after their failure last night because they seem to shine brighter than ever before and almost blind Santana with their brilliance. The circus band plays a lively tune that sounds very keenly American.

It vaguely registers with Santana that she and Rachel and the two female Dragon Changs are the only ladies dressed as Indian princesses out of the whole company—everyone else is a pioneer woman or else dressed in her own usual show clothes—but it does so just for the briefest second before a familiar hand slips into Santana's.

"Hey, darlin'," Brittany greets, a smile in her voice. "Let's get a look at you."

Brittany spins Santana around in a swirl, and Santana laughs, her skirt and leather robe swishing around her legs in a graceful cascade. She smiles her widest Brittany-smile. In the second when she has her back turned to Brittany, she wonders what Brittany's costume will look like, but then she makes her full about-face and finds that Brittany looks perfect.

Of course, Santana doesn't feel the least bit surprised.

While Santana is an Indian princess, Brittany is a homesteader in a white, felt Stetson hat with a black band about the crown and a vivid red paisley neckerchief. Brittany wears her usual costume otherwise, but somehow looks just the part for the sketch.

Before Santana can say anything, Brittany thumbs at Santana's cheek, just below where Santana can feel the face paint markings on her skin.

"They made your face all dirty just after you had your bath day," Brittany notes, scrunching up her nose and giving Santana's hand a squeeze.

(Santana feels a sweet pang play through her chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

"How did you know I had my bath day?" Santana asks, knowing that she never told Brittany as much herself.

Brittany shrugs, nonchalant, and gives Santana another twirl, paying no mind to the fact that they're not dancing in the same way that the other ladies around them are. "Your hair was all wet before lunch. And," she singsongs, "you smell like soap."

Santana flushes. "You noticed?" she asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Brittany gives a just-so nod. "I like noticing things about you," she says with a cat-grin.

(It's such a perfectly Brittany thing to say.)

(Santana's invisible string gives a tug.)

Before either Santana or Brittany can continue their conversation, the music changes and the usual rabble of black knights—now dressed as Indian braves—rushes out into the rings, letting up a mighty shout, charging at the maidens. As per their usual, Brittany and Santana laugh, and Santana screams, and they both hold tightly to each other's hands in the face of the coming onslaught.

Santana finds Puck amidst the horde almost immediately. He sports a feathered headdress and war paint on his face, though he wears his usual gypsy clothing otherwise, and carries a wooden tomahawk with him, as do some of the other men. Altogether, he looks very fierce, with black and white stripes on his cheeks and down the bridge of his nose.

Puck's eyes meet Santana's from across the ring. Briefly, he smiles his idiot-smile at her, though only for the quickest instant before the blue knights-turned-cowboys-and-pioneers show up to save the day, not on foot, as they usually might arrive, but on horseback and nestled into wagon beds, with Sam riding a dappled charger.

During the knight sketch, the blue knights and the black knights duel each other on even grounds with wooden swords. Today, the Indian braves and the pioneers have no such recourse for their staged violence; the Indian braves stand flatfooted and have only wooden tomahawks and bows without arrows, while the pioneer men come mounted on horseback and have fake guns and rifles, some of the them wooden, others of them metal.

Santana thinks she spots the false pistol Brittany wore on the day when she and Santana made such a mess playing around in the dressing tent holstered at Blaine's side.

For a second, Santana isn't sure what will happen, and she cowers behind Brittany, nervous and uncertain concerning what she ought to do, but then the drummer in the band strikes a sharp rap on his snare at the same instant that one of the cowboys motions with his fake gun as though he'd shot it. The Indian braves give a great whoop, and one of them falls to the earth, playing dead.

It's the male acrobat, Santana realizes.

He still has his arm in a sling.

At the sight of their fallen comrade, the braves attempt to rush forward with their tomahawks, but, just as they do so, the drumming speeds up, and they begin to fall faster. The audience roars with delight as the cowboys wave their guns about and "take aim." Immediately, the drummer trills off more drumbeats, rapid-fire, and more Indian men flop to the earth.

Even though Santana finds this new version of the sketch highly diverting to watch—it's the best kind of circus action, haphazard and beautiful well-choreographed chaos—she also feels weirdly uneasy watching the boys stage their playacting, though she can't precisely say why.

(It is just playacting, isn't it?)

She only registers her own uneasiness for just a moment before the music changes again and a final round of "shots" ring out, taking down the last of the braves, including Puck, who had stubbornly refused to fall until the final instant.

Santana watches now as Blaine takes aim at Puck with Brittany's old false pistol, and the drummer supplies him with a fatal shot—a single hard rap against the din.

Puck "takes the bullet," screwing up his face in a comical grimace that looks more dyspeptic than fatal. He clutches at his heart and pirouettes on one foot as though the force of the "shot" had spun him around. With all the grace of Methuselah dancing ballet, Puck throws himself down on the earth, kicking out his feet.

The audience roars with laughter in response to his performance, though somehow it doesn't seem to Santana that Puck meant his "death" to seem funny. Even so, Santana and Brittany both laugh at Puck, too.

When the braves "rise from the dead" to make their surrender to the cowboys and to receive their favors from the ladies, Santana overhears Rachel chiding Puck for his gregarious acting and can't help but laugh at him for a third time, even.

"—and, really, Noah, your performance was dreadful. If you'd just allow me to coach you a bit on the finer nuances of gesture, perhaps it would improve your stage presence and the audience would cease to find your improvisations so unfortunately laughable."

_("You haven't really joined Mr. Adams' circus until you've had Rachel criticize you.")_

Santana brushes past Rachel to hand Puck her flower.

(It's pale and pink, and she doesn't know the name for it.)

Puck smirks as he accepts Santana's favor. "You don't think I'm a bad actor, do you, ladybird?" he eggs her, tucking the flower into his vest.

Santana rolls her eyes a bit at Puck as she returns to Brittany's side. "I don't think you're a bad actor," she says honestly. She fixes Puck with a serious look. "I think you're the worst actor who ever there was."

"I thought you did all right," Brittany shrugs, taking Santana by the hand.

(She sounds very honest, too.)

(Puck once told Santana that the truth didn't matter, but he was altogether wrong.)

* * *

><p>The audience continues to applaud raucously for the frontier sketch, even as the performers exit the rings and William Schuester the Ringmaster welcomes everyone to Mr. J.P. Adams' American Independence Day Spectacular.<p>

Santana feels half-tempted to follow Brittany over to her backstage area, but she doesn't get the chance to tell Brittany as much before Mrs. Schuester interrupts them.

"Brittany Pierce! You best get to where you belong or so help me I'll have Ma Jones feed you no supper for a whole week!" Mrs. Schuester declares, waving a scolding finger in Brittany's face.

Brittany heaves a sigh but doesn't protest. "Yes, ma'am," she says solemnly.

Only as Brittany starts to walk away does Santana realize that today will mark the first knife throwing act since the matinee in Storm Lake.

Her stomach drops.

She thinks about everything Brittany told to her in the woods yesterday—about Brittany's secret and Brittany's father's worsening blindness—and remembers how much it tried her to stand before the board herself, even knowing that Brittany would never, ever harm her.

"Brittany!" Santana blurts out.

Brittany turns to face Santana immediately, her expression both intense and curious. Santana wants to say a thousand things to her—_I love you, stay with me, be safe, I wish you didn't have to do the act, I'll stand in your place_—but can't seem to manage more than one of them. The rules press in all around both girls, binding them up fast.

"Please be careful," Santana implores, breathless.

(Sometimes Santana couldn't be more foolish.)

(After all, Brittany's own carefulness only counts for so much in this situation.)

Brittany meets Santana's eyes in the same way that she did when Santana stood before the board, outlined in knives, as if just seeing Santana somehow reminds her of something holy. She nods her head, slow. "I promise I—," she starts, but she doesn't get the chance to finish.

"Santana Puckerman, come here this instant!" Mrs. Schuester snaps. "We have to get you out of that robe before you ruin it. Mr. Adams doesn't pay you to talk to Brittany!"

Though Santana has half a mind to retort that she has yet to see a cent from Mr. Adams since she signed onto the circus lists, Brittany prevents her from doing so, glancing quickly between Santana and Mrs. Schuester and smiling, bashful, a blush rising to her cheeks and ears.

"I can't help but keep her," she confesses, claiming the fault for herself. "I'll go now."

And, with another meaningful look at Santana, Brittany does go.

"I'll see you later, darlin'. I promise."

(Brittany has never lied to Santana before.)

(Santana feels caught up in something bigger and deeper and so much vaster than herself.)

* * *

><p>Aside from the fact that the male acrobat doesn't perform with the other Flying Dragon Changs on the trapeze, everything happens like clockwork during the matinee. No one misses his cue, no one botches his tricks, and the audience roars with delight for every act. Santana should probably take comfort in the seamlessness of the show, but she doesn't. She just can't help but worry about Brittany.<p>

When it comes time for the gypsy act, Santana feels distracted but nevertheless performs without mistake, keeping exact time with her tambourine and matching Rachel in the choreography. As she and Puck and Rachel stand at the fore of the ring, basking in the audience's enthusiastic ovation, it occurs to her that performing has become second nature to her; the routine has worn into her blood and bones, and her body looks forward to it, just like it once did the little day-to-day chores at the bachelor cottage.

As Rachel's voice wafts to the rafters of the big top during the Little Malibran sketch, Santana stands at the back of the tent, in shadow, trying to gauge whether or not today feels like a good luck or a bad luck day, stroking over the thread ring around her finger.

Rachel shatters the goblet in her first attempt to do so.

(Santana holds her breath.)

"Thank you, thank you! Our Little Malibran, everyone!" Will the Ringmaster coaches the audience. "Now that we've had our music, how about a little danger? Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a frontiersman skilled in the art of knife throwing, whose precision goes unmatched in these fine United States! I give to you Mr. Daniel S. Pierce and his beautiful daughter, Brittany, straight from the heart of Appalachia to the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus!"

The supes enter the ring with the backboard and prop, and the Pierces follow after them, Brittany now sans her hat and neckerchief and with the satchel slung over her shoulder, her father with the same surly gait as ever. Santana probably imagines it, but it seems to her that Brittany glances over to where she lingers in the darkness, knowing.

Santana holds her breath as Brittany arranges everything for the act and then takes her place before the board. It feels different watching the Pierce act now that Santana knows the trick for herself—almost as if she were a part of the goings-on, though, of course, she isn't.

Logically, Santana knows that her sitting through the trick, waiting on the sidelines, won't change anything about its outcome. Mr. Pierce will either aim true or he won't, and no amount of Santana's hoping and willing can alter his performance.

All the same, in some secret part of her, Santana knows that her own fate depends on what happens during the act as much as Brittany's does. An invisible string binds them together, and whatever happens to the one of them will happen to them both.

And so Santana must watch.

Just then, though Santana despairs to do it, she can't keep from imaging the worst, and sees, in her mind's eye, Brittany fallen to the ring, a horrible red seeping out over her pretty white dress. The image makes Santana sick and clammy all over. What could she do, though? A surgeon's daughter can no more save a life than a knife thrower's daughter can protect one for herself.

Not for the first time since arriving at the circus, Santana wishes that she knew how to pray— or, rather, that she knew how to believe in some force that could deliver Brittany from harm.

She'd give anything to keep Brittany safe.

Mr. Pierce meets Brittany's eyes, and father and daughter look deeply at each other, fixing in. Will the Ringmaster counts out paces for Mr. Pierce, and Mr. Pierce takes them, gaze never breaking from Brittany's. When Mr. Pierce reaches his tenth pace, he plants his feet and waits. Sure enough, just a few seconds later, Brittany nods. She smiles her show smile at the audience and waves but keeps eye contact with her father all the while.

She's ready.

(Santana isn't sure if she herself is ready or not. She doesn't have a choice but to be so, she supposes.)

Mr. Pierce throws.

_One._

Santana counts his throws if she were the one before the board. She checks the straightness of Mr. Pierce's arm and the fastness of his stare and holds her breath along with Brittany, never blinking, as if her unwaveringness counts for as much as does Mr. Pierce's and Brittany's.

Mr. Pierce's first throw lands true.

_Two._

And his second.

_Three._

_Four._

_Five._

_Six._

Though Mr. Pierce makes his throws instantaneously, Santana still feels as if it takes an eternity until Brittany stands haloed by knife hilts, unscathed and still unblinking. The audience applauds, and Santana draws a few quick breaths.

She knows there's more to come, though.

Brittany wrests the knives from the board and returns them to her father. She then procures the apple from her satchel and arranges it on her head, balancing it—to the delight of the crowd—as she dances back to her place in front of the target.

Right on cue, Brittany poses herself in the first position, as if she were one of Mr. Degas' ballerinas, beautiful with pastel pink skin and a fanning, flower skirt. She smiles as Will calls her father William Tell. The band starts to play Mr. Rossini's overture, and the audience laughs at the musical joke, but then the maestro quickly halts the music when Mr. Pierce takes aim.

As easy as if it were nothing, Brittany lifts her right leg up so that she stands in an upright split, her toe pointed toward the very crest of the big top, her body just barely bent to accommodate the stretch. She keeps perfectly still and meets her father's eyes. With a nod from her, he heaves his throw.

His knife digs deep into the backboard.

Safe.

_One._

Brittany shifts into an arabesque and Mr. Pierce throws again.

Safe.

_Two._

The apple remains perfectly balanced atop Brittany's head. Her father's second knife rattles against the backboard, just a few inches away from her nose. Brittany shifts into another dancing pose.

_Three._

Safe.

_Four._

Safe.

_Five._

Safe.

Brittany straightens up against the backboard and stands flatfooted for the final throw. The apple announces itself, red and wax-bright, against the white target. Will the Ringmaster declares that Mr. Pierce will take his final throw, and the audience applauds but then quickly runs silent again. Mr. Pierce produces the red blindfold from his belt, and Santana's whole body stiffens as he ties it about his head.

She listens and at first hears silence but then a dull rapping.

Brittany knocking on the board.

Aside from Mr. Pierce and Brittany and maybe Will, Santana is the only person in the whole big top who knows to listen for it—for Brittany's signal. She searches Brittany's eyes and sees Brittany steely, poised, still staring at her father through his blindfold, watching him though he can't watch her. Santana holds her breath.

And.

_Six._

Safe.

(Santana doesn't register the raucous applause from the audience, just the fact that Brittany kept her promise because Brittany always, always does so.)

* * *

><p>After the show, Santana passes her things off to Puck and then runs—no, flies—just as quickly as she can to the family tent row, bare feet fleet upon Iowa grass, her thoughts and heart and hope all in a jumble, fixed on promises she's made and on the abiding gratitude that pulses through her for Brittany's safety and well-being.<p>

She finds Brittany outside the tent, stooped and rustling through the sewing supplies that she and Santana left piled by the tent post. Brittany hears Santana behind her and starts to stand but not before Santana drapes herself over Brittany from behind, wrapping her arms around Brittany's middle and burying her face at Brittany's shoulder.

Their hair blends together, black so dark against the afternoon sun that it nearly shines blue, and blonde all the way from gold to white, like coins glinting in a treasury. Their rib bones fit against one another, and Brittany takes hold of Santana's arms, knitting herself to Santana, as she finally stands fully upright.

"Hey, you," Santana says, loving the beat of Brittany's heart as she can feel it through Brittany's body and against her own skin.

"Hey," Brittany returns, rocking back into her, feigning wobbliness. She reaches over her shoulder to set a hand on Santana's cheek. "You're all fluttery," she observes.

Santana nods. "I promised you I'd do something," she says, shifting to hold Brittany more tightly.

"You did," Brittany agrees. "You promised me you'd do two things."

Santana feels a thrill that Brittany remembered.

If Santana is truthful with herself, she must admit that she feels nervous and untethered, like laundry on a line, taken by the wind. She's never told such an important secret to anyone before, and somehow the truth seems almost too big to fit into words, never mind Misters Shakespeare and Scott and all their speeches. She would do anything to make Brittany happy, though—never mind her nerves and never mind where the wind takes her.

"Which thing do you want me to do first?" Santana mumbles, leaving it up to Brittany.

Brittany considers for a moment, still in Santana's arms, though her heart beats quick and hard, like the tick of a watch wound to its tightest coil. She swallows, and Santana feels it.

"Let's finish the fancywork," she says sensibly, "so that Mrs. Schuester won't bother us once we're done. And then—"

"—I can tell you my secret," Santana finishes.

Brittany hugs Santana more tightly to her. "Will that be all right?" she asks, a funny quaver to her voice.

"It'll be perfect," Santana assures her, pressing a quick kiss to Brittany's shoulder. "Now let's gather up the elephant blankets."

Brittany laughs. "Okay, okay," she says, pulling away from Santana.

When their eyes meet, Santana swears it.

(Brittany knows exactly what.)

* * *

><p>After gathering up their supplies, the girls decide to work in Santana's tent so as not to wake Brittany's father, sitting outside his front door. They only make it past the mess pit before they happen upon Puck and Sam, though. The latter boy walks with a basket slung over his arm.<p>

"Hey, ladybird!" Puck says slyly.

"Why, hello, Ms. Santana! And hello, Miss Brittany!" Sam smiles, wide and amiable.

"You two ladies wouldn't be hungry for some sandwiches, would you?" Puck offers, gesturing to Sam's basket.

Brittany quirks an eyebrow. "Sandwiches?"

Sam nods. "Ma Jones fixed us fellas a snack to help us through all the tedious work of loading up ol' Kenny's fireworks," he explains.

(Santana can't help but notice the way Sam's voice lifts when he mentions Ma Jones—as if he enjoys even just saying her name to mutual acquaintances.)

"Aren't those for you and the other workers, then?" Santana asks, not sure if Puck and Sam are at liberty to so freely give away what they offer.

"Well, sure they are," Puck says, "but, ladybird, what's mine is yours."

"And I wouldn't mind sharing my sandwich with you or Brittany, either," Sam adds helpfully.

"We could have a picnic," Puck singsongs. He wags his eyebrows at Santana, wolfish.

Santana meets Brittany's eyes, checking as to what Brittany wants to do. Though Santana doesn't doubt that Sam only wants to show kindness to his friends, she can't quite believe that Puck doesn't have more mischief in mind than simply sharing contraband sandwiches.

Truthfully, Santana doesn't want to spend more time with Puck than she has to; she wants to go with Brittany so that they can finish their embroidery and get on to telling secrets to each other. When she holds back, waiting for Brittany to speak, Brittany reads her cue.

"That's all right, fellas," Brittany demurs, offering up a one-shouldered shrug. "We're not hungry—and we've got work to do." She lifts the elephant blankets bunched in her arms, showing them off as if Puck and Sam had somehow previously failed to see them.

"Thank you anyway," Santana says, remembering her manners.

Sam tips his hat. "Well, all right," he says amiably. "If you change your minds, we'll be down on the midway."

Puck just grunts, put out.

"We wouldn't dream of trying to make you give up Ma Jones' sandwiches, Samuel," Brittany teases, starting to peel away from the boys, diverging from their path.

"Of course not!" Santana teases. "How could we when we know how very much you like them?"

Brittany smirks. "It wouldn't be very neighborly of us."

"And we would hate to be unneighborly," Santana smirks alike.

Sam laughs and blushes a little around the ears. He tips his hat to both ladies again and gestures to Puck to follow him as they duck into an alleyway between some white tents. As the boys go, Santana hears Puck grumble something, though she doesn't catch what it is.

(She has some guesses, though.)

* * *

><p>It doesn't take long before Brittany and Santana arrive at their destination. They slip inside Puck and Santana's tent and drop their sewing supplies, heavy, on the ground. Even after sloughing their supplies, both girls pant, overheated. The air inside the tent seethes with summer and humidity in the kind of way that causes Santana to forget that there's such a season as winter or such a feeling as being cool.<p>

"Whew," Brittany says, slumping onto the ground, patting the grass for Santana to sit beside her.

Sit Santana does, cross-legged and surveying their project. "You do the cutting and I'll do the beadwork?" she offers.

Brittany nods. "Whatever way you like," she says.

Santana grins. "I just like not having to use those confounded right-handed sewing sheers," she says loftily, reaching for the bead bag and a steel needle.

After rustling around for a few seconds in the bead bag, Santana looks up from her task only to find Brittany staring at her. Brittany wears her queer, delighted smile, as if someone had just offered her a candy for being pretty. Santana's cheeks heat under Brittany's gaze, and Santana shrinks a bit, suddenly worried that Brittany might disapprove of her cursing.

"What?"

Brittany grins and reaches for the sewing sheers. "You're sweet," she says, just so.

Santana quirks an eyebrow, not certain that she follows. "Sweet?" she says. "But I just said a coarse word, Britt."

Brittany shrugs. "Well," she says in her drawling way, "you said it sweetly."

She still wears her queer smile. It's starting to look more and more like she has a secret. Santana flushes even more.

"What?" she says again, ducking her head.

Brittany's eyes dart between Santana's, as if Brittany is measuring something out, pros and cons. Brittany bites her lip until it pinks. The longer she takes to look at Santana, the more Santana squirms. Finally, Brittany seems to finish her deliberations with herself.

She speaks all in one breath: "You still have boot black on your face from the spectacular, and it's the sweetest thing I think I ever saw."

Santana's eyes widen, and she reaches for her face without thinking twice of it. "Britt!" she squeaks, blushing even more deeply than before. "Why didn't anyone tell me? You mean I had it on all through the gypsy act and after the show, too?"

Brittany reaches for Santana's wrist, stopping Santana before she can drag her fingers through the blacking. "Don't smear it," she warns, trying—and failing—to quash down her smile with a sorry look instead. She settles on a funny smirk but doesn't particularly succeed in swallowing her giggles.

Santana groans, "Britt..."

Brittany takes pity on her. "I don't know why everyone else didn't tell you about the boot blacking, darlin'," she confesses, "but I didn't tell you about it because I thought you looked so swell with it on." She pouts out her lip. "You're not sore at me, are you?"

"Never," Santana says earnestly, melting at Brittany's compliment.

Brittany leans forward and kisses the tip of Santana's nose. "Good," she says, pulling away. Then, "I can help you wash most of it off, if you like. Or at least as much as we can wash it off with just water, I guess."

The invisible string attached to Santana's heart winds tight, tangled up in Brittany's kindness. "Okay," Santana says dopily, allowing Brittany to help her to her feet and lead her over to the cot. Santana sits down while Brittany goes to the steel toilette set to wet Puck's shaving washcloth. She furrows her brow. "I'm going to have to tell it to Puck for not warning me about the blacking, though."

Brittany shoots a glance over her shoulder in Santana's direction; she wears a peculiar expression, halfway between worried and not. "Well, maybe he thought you looked swell, too," she mumbles. Brittany's quietness seems curious to Santana, but Santana doesn't get the chance to ask about it before Brittany joins her on the edge of the cot. "Look up, please," Brittany says, setting two fingers under Santana's chin and lifting Santana's head.

(Santana's body anticipates a kiss instead of a wet washcloth, and her breath hitches for it.)

(Her lips feel very disappointed when Brittany starts gently cleaning at her cheek, though the rest of her feels grateful.)

Brittany works with careful hands to scrub the blacking from Santana's skin. She only wetted half the washcloth and she uses the dry part of it to pick up what paint she can from Santana's cheek before swabbing the stain away with the wet part.

Eventually, Brittany tilts Santana's head to the side and moves Santana's hair away from the edge of her face to get a better angle. Brittany hums an Independence Day song while she works and smiles at Santana with her eyes, though her lips remain pursed in deep concentration. Though it isn't particularly cool, the wet washcloth still feels soothing against Santana's skin, and the gentleness of Brittany's touch stirs something deep within Santana.

Santana remembers the last time she and Brittany sat on her bed together.

She swallows, hard.

"Are you okay?" Brittany asks her in a low voice.

"Yes," Santana says, heat nagging low in her belly. Then, "Thank you."

Brittany laughs. "Don't thank me yet," she says. "It doesn't come off all the way with just water."

Santana scrunches up her brow. "Well, then, what am I supposed to do?" she asks, distraught at the idea of having boot blacking on her face, no matter how many times she washes it.

Brittany doesn't answer Santana right away; instead, she sets her hands on Santana's shoulders and gestures for Santana to stand up with her from the cot. Though Santana's body longs to lie down with Brittany and do other things, Santana follows where Brittany leads and finds herself standing back at the steel toilette set, where Brittany splashes her cheeks with water and gives them one last thorough scrub.

"The clowns have a face tonic that takes the blacking right off," Brittany says placidly. "We can ask Blaine or Sam for some later, but it won't be any use now because you'll just have to get painted up again for the evening show anyway. I got most of it, though, darlin'. You can only see the stains if you look real close."

Before Santana can say anything in reply to this new information, Brittany does lean in real close herself and kisses Santana on the cheek, just where the blacking used to be.

(Santana's heart flutters.)

"Good?" Santana says in her little Brittany-voice.

"Good," Brittany repeats, looking at Santana for just a second longer than maybe she ought to.

A nervous fluttery sort of laugh—like Brittany's butterflies on the hill—bubbles up from Santana's throat, and Santana runs a hand through her own hair, wondering if maybe she shouldn't just say her secret right now and have done with it. She settles on something very close but not precisely it.

"You're kind of wonderful, you know, Britt?" she says, returning Brittany's cheek kiss.

(She feels heat on Brittany's skin.)

(It answers something beneath her own.)

Brittany shrugs one shoulder, bashful. "Well, Mrs. Schuester won't think so if I don't finish beading those blankets," she says, hanging the washcloth over the edge of the steel toilette basin.

For Brittany's word, Santana remembers their embroidery project for the first time in minutes. "Oh," she says. "You're right—she won't. She never thinks anything good of me anyway, but she'll probably think all sorts of awful things about me if I keep you from finishing your chores, and especially after I promised to help you with them."

"So you better just help me," Brittany says simply.

Santana smiles. "Yes, I'd better just."

* * *

><p>The girls' work passes quickly once they sit down to it. For a while, Brittany simply cuts threads for Santana, but then the two of them take to embroidering the beads at once, and thereafter everything goes seamlessly.<p>

"Did Abuela have a proverb about that?" Brittany asks when Santana notes their fast progress. Santana shakes her head no, and Brittany smiles in a just so way, neither happy nor sad. "Mama did," she reveals. "She used to say, 'Many hands make work light.'"

Santana pauses from her stitching. "I like that one," she says earnestly, imagining, for a moment, Brittany's mother, who must have been just as kind and wise as Brittany is, and probably beautiful, too.

Brittany makes a funny face. "Really?" she says, quirking an eyebrow. "Because it never really made sense to me. Not all work is heavy—these elephant blankets aren't, and neither are the beads—and some work is heavy no matter how many people you have to help you do it, like putting up the big top timbers or hauling the laundry bags."

Santana considers Brittany's words for a minute, chewing them over in her mind. "But what if you had the elephants to help you carry the laundry, Britt?" she asks. "Wouldn't the work be lighter then?"

Brittany fixes Santana with a serious look. "But elephants don't have hands, darlin'," she says, as if it should be obvious.

"Britt!" Santana laughs. "No fair!"

Brittany beams, pleased with herself, and then pauses for a minute. "It would be a better proverb if it rhymed, like the Spanish ones," she says thoughtfully.

(Sometimes Santana loves Brittany so much that she doesn't know what to do for it.)

* * *

><p>With their chore completed, Brittany and Santana gather up their supplies and emerge from the sweaty tent, headed in the direction of Mrs. Schuester in the dressing tent. Brittany insists upon carrying the elephant blankets, and Santana tags along behind her, holding only the sewing kit and bead bag for herself. With their every step toward their destination, her heartbeat turns faster and headier, too.<p>

(Today isn't tomorrow anymore. Today's today.)

When the girls reach the dressing tent, Brittany pauses just outside the threshold. She draws a whistling breath through her teeth. "Let's hope she likes the work," she says, parting the tent flaps and ushering Santana inside.

Somehow, Santana had expected that Mrs. Schuester would accept her and Brittany's project without question—though perhaps with a few of her usual barbs.

Somehow, Santana had expected that Mrs. Schuester would be quick to send her and Brittany away.

Somehow, Santana had expected entirely wrong.

Mrs. Schuester holds one of the two elephant blankets which bears Brittany's handiwork close to her face. Her mad eyes search up and down the beads, scrutinizing each one, and then narrow. Her lips thin on her face.

(She's both beautiful and terrible in a way that makes Santana hate to look at her.)

After a long while, her eyes flick from the elephant blanket to Brittany. She wears an expression that's downright acidic.

"I would think," she says slowly, in her honey-poison voice, "that even a halfwit like you could make a straight line when called upon to do it. I suppose I was wrong, though!" She shoves the blanket toward Brittany, shaking it as though it were filthy. "Santana has only been at the circus for less than two weeks, and somehow she can still do your chores better than you can! Did you think I wouldn't notice that your beadwork has more zigzags than any railroad line Mr. Fabray owns? Answer me!"

"She doesn't have to!"

It surprises Santana to hear her own voice so loud against the expanse of the dressing tent and so hard and flint-sharp, as well.

Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses, who had been scattered about making alterations to costumes for the spectacular, look up from their work, flabbergasted that Santana would shout at a person so much higher up in society than herself. They wear a terror for the rules written all over their faces and wide, white eyes.

Santana knows that she should stop speaking, but she doesn't.

"Brittany doesn't have to make an accounting of herself to you! When you asked her to embroider these blankets, you knew perfectly well how she'd do it, and if you didn't like it, you should have given all the work to me or to one of your girls who would do it to your liking! No one can see the detail on the beadwork from the stands anyway! I'm certain the elephants won't complain of it when they see it, either, because Brittany knows more about them than anyone at this circus anyhow and probably made just the pattern that they'd like to wear! Brittany's cleverer than you could ever hope to be, and you only hate her because you can't keep up with her conversation!"

It's too much, and Santana knows it's too much.

She could scarcely break more rules all at once if she were to stride into Mr. Adams' business tent and tell him that she disliked his hat and that she thought that he had hay for brains.

Everything in the room stills, and Brittany gasps from somewhere just behind Santana's shoulder. Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses all pause, open-mouthed, their needles dangling from their hands. Mrs. Schuester regards Santana, furious and astonished, her eyes bright with sheer offense, but only for the briefest second before her hand flies of its own accord.

Her palm connects, flatted, with Santana's cheek, and the noise of it reverberates around the room, her fingertips rapping against the side of Santana's head, sharp. Santana's skin flares with pinprick pain by the millions, and her one eye closest to Mrs. Schuester's hand waters from the impact. She feels the blow in her jaw and teeth and in the hollow places of her face.

The slap startles more than pains her, though.

Everyone in the room gasps again, and Santana straightens, clutching her cheek.

"Get out," Mrs. Schuester commands, pointing toward the door to the dressing tent.

Somehow, Santana is too startled to obey. Though she oughtn't to do it, she meets Mrs. Schuester's eyes and sees ferocity and indignation there but also another emotion—a kind of tiredness that she never would have expected, along with something close to shame.

Brittany's hands close around Santana's shoulders, and she starts to guide Santana away from the scene, leading her past Mrs. Schuester's girls and out the tent flaps into the sunlight. "I'm so sorry, Santana," she mumbles over and over again, as if she were the one whose hand had struck Santana's cheek and not Mrs. Schuester. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."

Santana expects Brittany to lead her somewhere far away, but Brittany doesn't.

(Brittany always surprises Santana, even with the little things.)

The girls stop between two small, white tents just to the west of the ladies' dressing area. Though the tents are of the same size and make as the residential tents in the white city, they occupy the business side of the camp, just beyond the billboard partition. Santana can tell that they're empty now by the way their sides billow in the wind without anything to fat them.

"Brittany, I—"

"Are you okay?" Brittany asks with so much forlornness in her voice that it causes Santana to jolt. When Santana looks to Brittany's eyes, she finds them shiny with unshed tears. "I'm so sorry she—she shouldn't have done—," Brittany stammers, but she can't seem to finish her sentence. She slumps against an empty barrel, leaned against a tent pole.

(Even though Mrs. Schuester maybe shouldn't have done, the rules say that she can.)

(And she did.)

(So.)

Seeing Brittany so upset squeezes something in Santana's heart. The truth is that other people have hit Santana before but telling Brittany that she has won't cause Brittany to feel any better or assuage Brittany's guilt for Mrs. Schuester hitting Santana now on her account. Santana fumbles for words as one might fumble for a lamp in the darkness.

"Brittany," she says, reaching over to take Brittany's hands in her own. A pause. "You know, Miss Minchin always hated Sara because Sara had such a queer way of looking at things."

Brittany's expression shifts from forlorn to quizzical. She meets Santana's eyes. "Is Sara the little girl from your book?" she asks in a very small voice.

Santana nods and is surprised to find tears in her own eyes, not from Mrs. Schuester's slap or because she feels sorry for herself at all, but because, in a way she could never fully explain, she knows that someone—that Brittany—has found her, and, moreover, that someone—that Brittany—comprehends her in a way that she doesn't even comprehend herself. It occurs to her that even in knowing her so completely, Brittany finds nothing to dislike in her at all, and again she can't help but feel grateful.

(To love a person's favorite book is to love a secret part of her, soft and hidden and curious.)

"She is," Santana says. Then, "Mrs. Schuester shouldn't say such horrible things to you, Britt."

Brittany nods. She shrugs and smiles a sad smile. "If I wasn't so bad at sewing, I wouldn't have gotten you in trouble, though," she says.

(Brittany always blames herself for things that aren't her fault.)

"No, Britt, you didn't—you shouldn't—," Santana scrambles, not wanting Brittany to hate herself even for a moment for any of Mrs. Schuester's doings. "You didn't do anything wrong at all! I meant everything I said to that old crow about you embroidering the blankets just how Methuselah and his ladies would like them. I don't regret anything I said to Mrs. Schuester at all! Remember what I told you earlier? Fiddlesticks and have done with it, Britt."

With Brittany half-sitting on the barrel, she and Santana seem nearly the same height for once. Brittany looks at Santana, serious, like she almost can't believe that such a person as Santana exists. "You're really not sorry about it?" she asks.

Santana nods. "No, I'm not sorry about it," she says firmly. "Theresa Schuester is wrong about you. You are the cleverest person I know, and the circus is lucky to have you."

The barest hint of a real smile starts to curl at Brittany's lips. "How do you know?" she says, somewhere between teasing and curious.

"Because," Santana starts, leaning in so, so close to Brittany's face, "you make the best jokes."

A quick kiss to Brittany's lips.

"And you're the only person who would talk to me when I got to the circus."

Another kiss.

"And you make all the patrons smile when they see you at the parade and during the show."

Another.

"And you're the most beautiful girl at the circus, and if Mr. Adams were wise, he'd have your face on a billboard so that people would just know you exist."

This time, Brittany giggles when Santana's lips meet hers.

"And because—"

Santana kisses Brittany again, losing her words to the sensation, to the swelling, wonderful, too bright feeling in her chest.

"—and because—"

Brittany kisses her first this time, not with a quick kiss but with a deep one, soft and thankful.

"—and because I'm in love with you in the storybook way."

* * *

><p>On all of the occasions when Santana imagined herself telling Brittany her secret, she somehow always supposed that she would also give a very detailed explanation along with it, so as to make certain that Brittany understood exactly how she meant what she said.<p>

She didn't want Brittany to somehow mistake her love for the friendly sort, after all, and neither did she want to somehow make her own feelings sound maudlin or haphazard, for, of course, she herself had considered them a great lot, and knew that her love was of a most serious and enduring kind.

She had intended to make a very deliberate sort of speech to Brittany about everything.

She had intended to be in control of herself when she spoke.

She had not intended to blurt out that she loved Brittany in the storybook way while they were hiding amongst derelict tents and both of them were giddy.

She had not intended to make such a fool of herself at all.

* * *

><p>Santana recoils from Brittany like their latest kiss shocked her, clapping two hands over her own mouth, as if doing so will somehow trap the words back in, though she has already spoken them.<p>

She gasps.

(She thinks it's because she's surprised.)

For an instant, she can neither breathe nor move, and she can't think of anything except for how she just misspoke perhaps the most important thing she might ever have the chance to say. If Brittany doesn't suppose her the grandest fool on the face of all the earth, it will be some sort of miracle. She blushes so deeply that Brittany can probably see the imprint of Mrs. Schuester's palm seared across her cheek. All the same, though she can't stand to see Brittany's reaction, she also can't stand not to see it, either. She meets Brittany's eyes, helpless, and waits.

_Oh God, oh God, oh God._

Brittany stares at Santana, an unreadable expression on her face. Her brow knits together, and her mouth hangs just barely open. She looks as if someone had just awakened her very suddenly from a dream, and she isn't certain yet as to in which world she finds herself—asleep or alert.

Santana lowers her hands from her mouth. "Britt... was that okay?" she squeaks.

Brittany nods immediately. She hasn't blinked since Santana first looked at her. There's a stillness in her, utterly indecipherable to Santana. "Yeah," she says, just so.

(The worried knot in Santana's heart unravels just a bit.)

(And yet she still has a tremor.)

"Do you... Do you understand what I said just now?" Santana asks, her voice turning tight and teary in her throat. She doesn't think she's ever heard herself sound smaller.

Again, Brittany nods. She looks at Santana in her careful, all-seeing way. "I understand," she says quietly, with another nod.

And then.

She leans forward, slowly—so impossibly slowly that at first Santana isn't sure she's doing it—and finds Santana's lips, pressing into them, both urgent and deliberate at once.

After the initial press, she takes Santana's bottom lip between her own. She works Santana's mouth open so that they can kiss more deeply. Her tongue slips along Santana's, and Santana moans without meaning to do it.

Brittany's hands link at the small of Santana's back and she pulls Santana into her so closely that their hips fit together. Her body is warm all over. Santana relaxes into her touch. Her own hands find a place just at Brittany's waist. She strokes over Brittany's hipbone with her thumb and sinks into wet kissing sounds and Brittany's breath and into the lit feeling that flares inside of her again, like it did earlier in the day.

Without meaning to, Santana rolls her hips and presses closer to Brittany until their breasts rub together and their bellies touch. Suddenly, Santana finds that her clothing feels unfortunately tight and altogether unnecessary. She trails her kisses from Brittany's mouth to the hinge of Brittany's jaw, and Brittany lets out a voiced breath, lowering, boneless, against where she sits.

"Santana," she whispers, needing something.

Santana reaches for the hem of Brittany's skirt and starts to drag it up Brittany's leg. She meets Brittany's eyes, checking to see if what she's doing is okay, and Brittany nods, eager. Santana smiles, fire blooming in her heart.

She likes this touching because it says exactly what she means.

Her hands write out _I love you_ slow on Brittany's skin. They trail it up Brittany's leg as she lifts Brittany's skirt. Santana stops with the garment up around Brittany's hip and strokes over Brittany's hipbone, now naked without any calico to curtain it. A thrill passes through her.

"May I—?" she starts to say.

But then.

"Oh! I beg pardon!" a booming, boastful voice comes from just beyond the tents.

Santana's heart all but escapes out her throat. She drops the hem of Brittany's skirt as if it had burned her. Her pulse pounds again, though for an entirely different reason than it did before. Before Santana thinks better of it, she whips around to find Mr. Remington standing at the end of the alleyway, reporter's ledger and pencil in hand. He wears a strong squint and nods his head to the girls, as if to apologize for his presence, though he doesn't move otherwise.

Santana glances at Brittany.

_How much did he see?_

Santana can't begin to imagine all the bad things that might happen from Mr. Remington knowing about her and Brittany's secret. She also can't find any words to make an explanation or to excuse herself at all. Her whole mind blanks as she stares between Mr. Remington and Brittany, waiting for someone to say something.

Brittany does.

"We were just off to practice for the evening show," she says evenly.

For all of Santana's anxiety, Mr. Remington only nods. "Oh, that's very good of you girls," he says. If he has any idea what he just stumbled upon, he makes no indication of it. He seems blessedly, wonderfully amiable—and oblivious.

Brittany smiles a falser version of her show-smile and nods in deference to Mr. Remington. "Come on, Santana," she says, straightening out her own skirt and then taking Santana by the hand, tugging Santana in the opposite direction from Mr. Remington down the alleyway.

"Okay," Santana says, totally stupid.

She can't keep from staring at Mr. Remington as Brittany leads her away.

* * *

><p>The girls don't stop until they're well within the borders of the white city and far away from Roderick Remington. They halt just a few paces off from the Pierce family tent, though not before checking to see that they're truly alone.<p>

Almost right away, Brittany reaches out to smooth Santana's bangs away from her face, careful. Her eyes are as soft and pristinely blue as Santana has ever seen them. She smiles both with her look and with her mouth and seems very keenly excited about something, like a person who expects to host a favorite visitor by week's end or like someone who just found an extra penny in the pocket of her coat.

"I don't think I want to be anywhere that isn't just with you before the next show," Brittany announces, and, despite her recent fright, Santana laughs because she feels the same.

"Me, either," she agrees, still a bit breathless from everything that's happened to her over the last hour. She rubs against the edge of Brittany's hand, curled beside her face; Brittany's touch feels soft and easy when nothing else is so.

(Ackley is a place where everything happens all in a rush.)

Brittany glances away from the camp. She starts to pet over Santana's cheek, soothing where Mrs. Schuester slapped Santana earlier but also doing so just because, because.

"What do you say we hide in the woods until the show bell rings?" she asks, not at all joking.

Her suggestion puts an idea into Santana's head.

"Okay," Santana consents. She chooses her next words very precisely. "And what do you say we bring your knives along, too? We could practice the act, if you wanted," she offers.

Brittany doesn't seem convinced. "Are you sure you want to?" she asks, screwing up her face. "You've already gone through a lot of trouble today because of me."

_"La práctica lo hace perfecto, Britt,"_ Santana says seriously.

Brittany's brow furrows. "That one didn't rhyme," she says flatly.

Santana smiles at Brittany's cleverness. "That's because it's an American proverb—or an English one, I guess—and I just said it in Spanish," she admits.

Brittany gives Santana's cheek another stroke. "Well, for a phony Spanish proverb, it still sounded pretty, even if it didn't rhyme," she shrugs, placid. Then, "Let me go inside to get our things?"

It surprises Santana that she could so easily convince Brittany to practice throwing with her but not in an unpleasant way. After standing up to Mrs. Schuester, Santana somehow feels ready to face any danger, as long as she has Brittany with her to do it. She nods.

"Right. I'll wait for you," she says, more pleased to hear Brittany say _our things_ than she would ever divulge to anyone aloud.

Brittany broadcasts a parting smile to Santana, that same giddy excitement in her eyes from before, and bounces over to her own tent, ducking inside. She scarcely opens the tent flaps at all and then closes them thoroughly behind her. Her moves are quick, practiced, and feline.

Only after Brittany goes away does Santana realize for the first time in the wake of her confession that Brittany hasn't actually said the words _I love you_ back to her yet.

Her stomach drops.

This morning, Santana had felt almost certain that Brittany loved her just the same as she loves Brittany, and she had imagined, in her own fanciful way, hearing Brittany say as much as soon as she felt brave enough to finally tell Brittany the plain and honest truth.

But now Santana has told Brittany the plain and honest truth, and the only thing Brittany's said in return is that she understands what Santana means by it.

Did Santana somehow misestimate Brittany's feelings for her, then?

Panic starts to fill Santana, pushing away her logical thoughts. She struggles to keep her composure, searching for the rationale behind Brittany's reserve. Right away, Santana realizes that, if nothing else, Brittany at least doesn't resent her for her love. After all, Brittany said she understood it. And she kissed Santana just after she did so—deep and more than friendly.

Maybe Brittany did mean to say that she loves Santana back, only Mr. Remington interrupted Brittany from doing it, or else Brittany had some other reason for waiting.

Santana breathes in, deep, and tries to steady herself. She'd like to think she learned her lesson on assuming anything about what Brittany feels for her after everything that happened between them last week. All the same, though Santana hates to do it, she knows that if Brittany doesn't say anything concerning her confession soon, she must ask Brittany about it, for the good of her own heart.

She doesn't get the chance to think anything more on the matter, though.

"Santana! Girl, if you're just standing around waiting for Brittany Pierce, I could sure use you in the kitchen to peel potatoes. Lord knows supper won't cook itself and my girls are already cracking chickpeas and have been since noon."

(It had been too long since Ma Jones had snuck up on Santana.)

"I—," Santana starts to protest, but she doesn't manage to say anything beyond that before Brittany emerges from the Pierce tent, sans the throwing supplies, apparently savvy to Ma Jones' presence.

"Brittany!" Ma Jones says, not displeased to see her. "If y'all are handy, I sent Samuel Evans off to the midway with one of my baskets full of sandwiches so he and his woodenhead friends could have a smidge to eat while they loaded up Ken's fireworks for the night show. I reckon they probably done with their sandwiches now—or they should be—so you need to go get the basket back from them before they find some way to make mischief with it."

Brittany and Santana glance at each other, helpless.

"Yes, miss," they both say at once, knowing that they can't very well refuse Ma's orders now that she's caught them without other chores to do in the middle of the day.

Ma nods, glad to see them deferent. "A'ight. Come on, Santana," she says, gesturing towards the kitchen.

Santana slings a desperate look at Brittany. She has a thousand things to say but no time in which to say them. "Yes, miss," she says again, watching as Brittany starts out in the direction of the big top.

* * *

><p>A deep tiredness overtakes Santana as she sits down to peel potatoes. It tightens in her face and heavies in her bones. Earlier in the day, Santana had forgotten that she scarcely slept at all last night, but now she feels as if she hasn't slept in weeks and as if her sleeplessness is inescapable.<p>

She wants very much to take a nap and to not to have to peel potatoes.

She also just wants Brittany to love her back.

_(Please.)_

Though Santana had expected that Brittany would appear sometime before the bell, Brittany only returns to the mess just as it rings. She shows up short of breath, her golden hair windswept and hanging over her face, as if she'd run all the way from the midway to the mess pit in a just few minutes' time. She doesn't see Santana seated at the dining table and hurries away after returning the boys' empty picnic basket to Ma's care, rushed to prepare for the evening show.

As she goes, she skips a little, and Santana smiles.

(Brittany moves with that same quiet excitement from before.)

At her gazebo, Santana can't help but think of Brittany, to the point where she can scarcely bother to say anything clever about her patrons' palms. She fumbles through four readings, promising absurdities while Ken glowers at her from beside her marquee sign. She doesn't say anything wrong, per se—just nothing entirely right, either.

The image of Brittany's quiet, excited smile hovers at the forefront of Santana's mind like the last lingering memory of a happy dream.

It soothes Santana more than anything Brittany could say to her at the moment, barring the words "I'm in love with you, too."

(Santana always trusts Brittany with important things.)

Vaguely, it occurs to Santana how difficult a thing it seemed to confess her love to Brittany before she had done it and then how easy a thing it seemed afterward. It seems so much that Brittany loves her that Santana can scarcely believe it isn't so. Maybe Brittany is only afraid to speak, like Santana was before. And if she is, then how could Santana complain about it or pressure her to speak faster?

_El amor es sufrido, Santana, y es benigno._

* * *

><p>Somehow, Santana hadn't expected to see Mrs. Schuester again so soon after their run-in at the dressing tents and so has a start when she does, coming into the backstage area. Mrs. Schuester's mad eyes find Santana from across the way, and, for a half-second, Santana wonders if Mrs. Schuester won't fly at her again or at least complain of her to Puck or Ken.<p>

Santana halts where she stands, waiting for the worst.

The worst doesn't come, though.

Mrs. Schuester stares at Santana, that weird near-shame in her eyes again, and then looks quickly away, pretending not to have seen Santana at all, perhaps. It isn't the strangest way that Mrs. Schuester has ever behaved toward Santana, so Santana doesn't question it.

Without delay, Santana goes quietly over to one of Mrs. Schuester's girls and asks for her costume and flower for the spectacular. She follows the girl to the dressing tent past where Mrs. Schuester stands, wondering all the while what it will mean for her now that Mrs. Schuester has decided to ignore her existence entirely.

* * *

><p>Santana returns to the backstage from the dressing tent just in time to join the ladies going into the big top. She wears blacked cheeks, a tied robe, and feathers loud upon her headband. She carries a cluster of pink pye weed in her hand, ready to give it away as a favor to a "frontier man" at the end of tonight's sketch. Rachel avoids Santana in the queue, and Santana nearly regrets it, but only until they enter the ring and Santana finds Brittany waiting for her, barely able to contain herself for all her giddy excitement.<p>

Brittany has improved her costume for the spectacular since the matinee. Now instead of wearing only her usual white ballet dress paired with a Stetson hat and neckerchief, she also has on a bandolier not unlike her father's and pretty fringed Western gloves of the same shade of red as her neckerchief. In her wonderful Brittany-way, she looks dashing, and Santana applauds to see her, as does the audience.

It turns out that Brittany isn't the only one to have upgraded her costume for the night performance, though.

During the matinee, Puck was dressed as one lowly Indian brave amongst many, but tonight he appears as an Indian chief, with a magnificent trailing headdress dyed in every color of the rainbow. Santana can only imagine how many geese had to sacrifice for Puck to have such a decoration, which trails all the way down his back and must weigh nearly twenty pounds or more, judging by the visible strain in his neck.

Puck has entirely traded in his gypsy costume, wearing fringed buckskin leggings and a bare chest in its place. Someone has painted his entire face white, with red stripes down his cheeks and nose and over where his eyebrows should be.

If Santana didn't know who he was, she would be entirely convinced he were an Indian.

(Circus magic.)

The crowd roars with delight and awe as Puck rides into the big top on a fearsome black horse with no saddle beneath him, his "braves" at either side of his steed. Puck lets out a great war whoop and jumps down from his mount to charge the maidens with the other Indians.

(No one seems to notice the supe who creeps out from the shadows, leading Puck's black charger quietly away.)

Santana doesn't have to make herself pretend to scream when Puck lunges for her, for he seems so wild and unlike himself that she can't help but forget the sketch a bit, despite the audience and stage lights.

(It's only playacting, isn't it?)

She shrieks and dodges back, throwing herself behind Brittany. She can only hope that the pioneer men will arrive soon—with Sam on his dappled steed and Blaine with his false pistol—to intervene before Puck can lay hands on her.

Except.

In the blink of an eye, Brittany produces Blaine's selfsame false pistol from the fold of her bandolier, brandishing it toward the rafters. She shoots Santana her slyest wink and shouts, at the top of her voice, "Bang!"

All at once, everyone under the big top has their eyes on her.

Puck is already coming at a dead run and can't slow his momentum for anything, though Santana sees a waver of confusion cross his brow. The audience roars.

"It's Annie Oakley!" someone shouts.

Someone else yells, "Yeehaw!"

For her part, Brittany furrows her brow in concentration and "takes aim" at Puck down the barrel of her pistol. She bites on a corner of her tongue and closes one eye, as serious as if her showdown were real.

When Puck comes to within three feet of her—tripping over his own legs to slow to a halt before he and Brittany collide—Brittany jolts her arm back in a wide, staged "shot," and the drummer in the band raps hard on his instrument just in time to her motion.

Santana shrieks, and Puck yelps.

Though Puck did not well abide Rachel, Santana, and Brittany's criticisms of his acting earlier in the day, at least some of their chiding seems to have influenced him for the better, for when Brittany "shoots," he stops as if he had hit an invisible wall and all but leaps to the ground, landing on his side—only barely managing not to crush the feathers on his headdress beneath him—immediately "falling dead."

Santana doubts that the real Annie Oakley could have so pleased the audience if Mr. Buffalo Bill Cody were to have sent her on loan to Mr. Adams for the night show.

So great is the audience's applause and so raucous their cheering that Santana feels nearly deafened for it. In her nine days at the circus, she has never seen any crowd as delighted at anything as this one is at Brittany's antics. The band strikes up an impromptu rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," and the audience begins to sing along, many of the patrons rising from their benches to doff their hats and wave their handkerchiefs.

Brittany seems a bit flummoxed at the success of her prank and looks uneasy at the sight of Puck sprawled upon the ground.

"I don't like shooting, I don't think," she mumbles as Santana sidles up at her elbow and the pioneer boys ride in on their horses to wallop the other Indians and finish out the sketch.

Santana can't say that she very much likes shooting, either, or even to see anyone playacting at it, let alone her Brittany, even if it's just for the show. She shrugs, uneasy.

"You made everyone smile, though, just like I told you," she says honestly. "No matter what else happens tonight, you'll be the best part of the circus."

Brittany blushes deeply at Santana's compliment. "Shucks, Santana," she says, tilting her face down so that she can hide behind the brim of her Stetson hat.

Her cheeks don't resume their normal color until long after the pioneers have soundly vanquished the Indian braves—who fall easily without their leader—and the ladies have given away their flowers.

Santana gives her flower to Sam, who stands closest to her of all the men, while Brittany keeps her own flower for herself, sticking it under the band of her hat—an action which no one protests.

Unfortunately for him, Puck has no choice but to lie on the ground playing dead through the whole sketch and misses out on the battle, which is probably his favorite part. By the time he peels himself from the ring, Santana has already given Sam her favor. Puck grimaces when Rachel hands him a sprig of wilted, green rattlesnake weed.

(Santana almost feels sad for him.)

(Except, except, except.)

* * *

><p>Brittany's antics during the opening sketch set the tone for the rest of the show.<p>

After Santana returns her robe and headband to Mrs. Schuester's girls, she watches from the aperture in the tent as the male Dragon Chang resumes his part in the trapeze act and performs as if he had never been injured doing it.

Once the acrobats clear the big top, the clowns appear and improvise a sketch in which they storm "yon San Juan Hill," with off-key bugles and an upside-down flag that boasts a poorly-drawn clown face. They climb halfway up the ladder to the trapeze platforms before they rather comically remember that they are all, to a one, insurmountably afraid of heights and don't want the hill after all.

At first, Santana doesn't understand the reference, but then Rachel explains very loudly and to anyone in the backstage area who will listen to her that her father read a newspaper article detailing how General Shafter had overtaken a very important hill of the same name in Cuba this Friday last as part of the war and that a correspondent from the _New York Times_ had been there to see it all happen.

(The more Rachel talks, the more Santana's head begins to spin.)

(She finds she dislikes the way Rachel says the name of the Spanish general—_Linares_—more than she could ever explain.)

After the clowns, the Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie draws a standing ovation for their riding, and Mr. Jesse St. James somehow makes it so that all three of his African lions and his Bengal tiger roar at the same time, to the shock and awe of the crowd.

Puck disappears for a while during the middle acts and returns with his face scrubbed clean of its paint, his cheeks thoroughly raw and pink.

"You get any of that tonic, ladybird?" he asks, pointing to Santana's face, though the answer to his question should be obvious to him.

(She hasn't.)

"I, uh—"

"Hey, Sammy! Toss your magic face cleanser over to Rachel so she can help my missus get gussied up for our act!" Puck commands, pointing a finger at Sam, seated by the fire.

Sam rolls his eyes at Puck's rudeness but nevertheless rustles through his leather pouch and procures a long, green vial. "Here you are," he says, standing up and delivering the vial over to Rachel. "You only need a few drops," he warns her, handing over a smudged cloth into her care, as well.

Rachel wears a forced smile. "Thank you, Samuel," she says, motioning for Santana to follow her over to the benches.

As it turns out, Santana finds that having Rachel clean her face is not nearly as interesting or as gentle as having Brittany do it.

"Hold still," Rachel chides, though Santana hasn't moved. She wields Sam's washcloth like it pains her to hold it and scrubs harshly over the sore spot where Mrs. Schuester slapped Santana earlier.

"Ow," Santana complains.

Rachel sniffs, indignant. "Oh, I'm sorry, Santana," she says in a treacly voice. "Is something the matter? Perhaps it would be better if you had _Brittany_ do this."

Santana frowns. "What does that mean?" she asks, a niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach. Rachel prods over her sore spot again, and she winces.

"Nothing, I'm sure," Rachel says bluntly. Then, "Only that since you know Brittany _so well_, and you two obviously understand what's good for each other, you might ask her to help you clean off this paint, as I'm _clearly_ ill-suited to the task."

She scrubs hard over the sore spot again.

"Ow!" Santana yelps, recoiling. "Will you please be careful?"

"It won't come off if you won't stop moving!" Rachel shouts but then immediately throws the washcloth down on the bench and looks up at the sky, exasperated. "I can't work under these conditions!" she declares, as if Santana had ruined something just by moving her head. Rachel sets Sam's green vial where she herself once sat. "Be careful of this," she warns. Then, "Noah, you'll have to tend to your wife yourself, unless you can find _Brittany_ to do it. I'm sure she'll come running."

Rachel then makes what Santana can only describe as a very theatrical exit from the backstage area, headed off toward the dressing tent.

"What was that all about?" Puck asks, agog.

Santana searches herself. "I—I don't think I know," she falters.

After several moments, the sound of Rachel's voice wafts over the backstage area, singing scales. It comes clear from the dressing tents and sounds vibrant, fierce, and—if Santana listens carefully—just a little bit circus-lonely, as well.

* * *

><p>Perhaps surprisingly, Puck proves much gentler than Rachel at cleaning Santana's face paint off, albeit a bit clumsier with his strokes and more liberal with Sam's face cleanser than her on the whole, too.<p>

Santana finds it very uncomfortable to sit on the same bench as Puck with his face so close to hers, and especially in public, where everyone can see them, but she hasn't any choice but to submit to his care because, despite Rachel's assurances to the contrary, Brittany does not appear to finish the chore, no matter how much Santana wills it to be so.

Luckily, Rachel had already done most of Puck's work for him, so Santana only has to endure a few awkward moments of Puck staring at her face—she hates how attentively his eyes trace over her features, checking for any stray blacking, and especially the way they linger, wolfish, at her lips and along the curve of her neck—before they can both rise and return Sam's supplies to him.

When it comes time for the gypsy act, Rachel appears without anyone having to call for her. She lights her fire flail without looking at Santana and follows Puck into the big top at Santana's side just as night falls over Ackley, violet, warm, and deep.

Tonight, Santana delights in the beauty of the gypsy dance, in the way Puck's fire curls about his limbs, almost sentient, and at how the audience claps in time to the cadence of the music. For the second time in the day, Santana feels as if the routine has somehow worn into her blood and bones and senses how her body looks forward to it.

She sees orange flames reflected upon the silver pocket watches and brooches of the people on the bleachers. It gives the illusion that the whole tent is on fire, though in a harmless, happy sort of way.

(Santana spins and spins until she feels reckless and dizzy from it.)

* * *

><p>Despite Santana's apprehension, the Pierce's knife throwing act passes without incident, a grace for which Santana thanks her shoulder devil. Afterward, the elephants perform their majestic tricks. Methuselah finishes out the night with a resounding trumpet before Will the Ringmaster resumes the floor and faces the crowd.<p>

"We thank you for your most affable response to tonight's show! It has truly been our pleasure to host you on this holiday! Now, by courtesy of my good friend and most generous employer, Mr. J.P. Adams, I would like to invite you, the estimable citizens of Ackley and its surrounding areas, to remain with us for a celebration, during which time our most excellent circus band will divert us with music for dancing. As a special token of Mr. Adams' ceaseless adoration for both your great town and this great and glorious nation, we shall conclude the evening with fireworks. Come, join us in the rings! Let us celebrate this, the land of the free, and the home of the brave! Happy Glorious Fourth, everyone!"

(As she listens to Will's speech, something catches in Santana's throat, though perhaps not because of the sentiment of his narration.)

(She stands just on the outside of the festivities, looking in on them from the darkness.)

The ushers lead the patrons down from the stands, and, as they do so, Santana begins to notice a peculiar happening behind her. At first, the tent canvas directly at her back starts to rustle, and then, all at once, it lifts.

Santana gasps when she catches sight of Ken and a host of supes, who appear from behind the gap in the canvas. Each man holds a long, metal hook on a pole, much like the one Ma Jones employs to ring the mess bell to call the company for shows and meals.

With deftness and practiced motions, the supes use their hooks to reach for rope latches on the sides of the big top tent. They then lift the canvas as one would lift a lady's skirt from the ground to save it from dragging through mud or water.

In the next instant, the indoors and outdoors fully become one place.

Though the big top's roof remains intact, the sides of it peel away, until everyone inside the rings and on the bleachers can look out to see the stars and a moon nearly as full as the one under which Santana, Brittany, and the boys bathed naked in the waters of Storm Lake. Several planets dot the sky—Santana counts Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus as she spins to see them each in turn—unblinking. Everything feels bright and hopeful, despite the cover of darkness.

Almost immediately after raising the tent, Ken hollers for Puck, Sam, Finn, Blaine, David, Shane, and a handful of other fellows to join him in preparing the "pyrotechnics." They all go away together to someplace beyond the men's dressing tent. As if on their cue, the other circus folk begin to disperse from Santana's backstage area, as well, leaving her alone.

"Hey, darlin'."

(And, as if Brittany had planned it, the band begins to play.)

Because Ken had warned the company not to approach the townspeople or make pests of themselves with their merriment, Santana hadn't known what to do once Will invited everyone into the ring, and so feels glad—heaps upon heaps of glad, actually—when Brittany takes her by the pinky finger and leads her around the curve of the big top, clearly with some destination in mind.

"You still good for that dance, darlin'?" Brittany whispers, that same giddy excitement from before now in her voice as well as in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth.

Santana nods, too excited to speak.

(She likes it very much when Brittany takes her on adventures.)

The girls end up on the side of the big top closest to the midway, where Brittany gestures to the back frame of the recently emptied bleachers. A loose latticework of rods supports the bleachers from behind, but beyond the latticework and directly underneath the bleachers themselves, Santana sees a flat of grass, deep in shadow and entirely hidden away from the big top rings at the front.

"We can dance down there, and no one will see us," Brittany explains, and Santana grins at her.

(Any person who calls Brittany a halfwit ought to have her own brains examined.)

"Careful," Brittany says, helping Santana slip through the latticework without tangling her gypsy skirt. Santana then turns to help Brittany climb through the latticework in kind.

It's far darker beneath the bleachers than it was under the light of the full moon. Blue shade hangs on everything, and the air feels cool and still. Though the band's songs are still very audible through the slats in the bleachers, the din of conversation and motion don't sound nearly as loud to Santana here as they did in the rings.

Everything about the space seems somehow like a secret.

Once Brittany slips through the back of the bleachers, she explores the space, ducking her head to see down the "corridor" to the left and to the right of her. She wanders toward the bleacher seats and peers out at the rings from below, her arms resting on the back of the bench just under her chin, her face level with the gap between it and the bench above it. Santana flanks her, wanting to see what she sees, standing a bit on tiptoe to get a good look.

To Santana's great delight, she finds that she and Brittany have a perfect view of Rings Two and Three, and that, from their vantage point, they can see everyone, though no one can see them.

(She suddenly feels like Harry Birch in Mr. Fenimore Cooper's novel.)

She laughs, not because anything seems funny to her but because she and Brittany have a secret together, and Brittany laughs, too, just the same.

"Puck always said it would be easy to pickpocket gillies if we sat under the bleachers during a show," Brittany notes.

Santana pretends to act scandalized. "That's a very criminal thing for him to say," she gasps, and she and Brittany laugh again before lapsing into easy silence.

They watch, clandestine, for a few more moments as the townspeople form lines, the men and the women, coached from within their own numbers, and then as the townspeople begin to dance, sprightly and gay. They watch again as the circus folk begin to occupy the space just behind the rings and on the outsides of the tent in what used to be the backstage areas, forming lines and dancing amongst themselves beneath the light of the moon.

The townspeople, Santana notices, are dressed very well, the men in rounded collars and the women in dresses of velvet and lace. It strikes Santana how they must love this holiday and adore their country to come clothed in such fine apparel to a circus and a rural "barn" dance such as this one. By comparison, the circus folk are not so well-dressed at all; most of them still wear their costumes from the show and some of them even their stage make up.

They seem just as happy as the townspeople, though.

Santana watches the beginnings of these dances for several minutes, seeing the townspeople take each other by the hands, wondering if any of them love each other in the same way that she loves Brittany and maybe as Brittany loves her.

Her thoughts prompt her to glance over at Brittany by her side. When Santana does so, she finds Brittany staring at her rather than at the dance, her expression deep, thoughtful, and perhaps even a little bit awed. Brittany rests her chin on her arms. Her eyes seem dreamy but the rest of her awake. Blue shadow falls across her face, and Santana doesn't know what to do for how beautiful she is.

Except.

"Hey, BrittBritt. Would you like to have a dance now?"

"Sure thing, darlin'."

(And so they do, and so they do, and so they do.)

* * *

><p>Brittany leads Santana away from the bleachers and into the open heart of their private space. They wait until the band strikes up a new song, and Brittany curtsies to Santana and Santana back to Brittany. Both girls laugh.<p>

"May I?" Brittany says in her falsely proper accent, extending a hand to Santana.

"You may," Santana says, feigning dignity, though she knows how very silly they both seem.

Without further exchange, she accepts Brittany's proffered hand. A thrill swoops through her body. In the next second, Brittany pulls her forward, meeting their hips together, and they begin a quick, lively dance together in time to the music, Brittany leading, Santana following, and both of them laughing a lot.

"Britt, what's this dance called?" Santana asks, giggling as Brittany spins her in a rollicking circle.

"It's a schottische. It's step-step-step-hop, step-step-step-hop, step-hop-step-hop-step-hop-step-hop," Brittany chants, breathless and in time to their dancing.

"It wouldn't be so hard if we didn't have to keep switching feet," Santana muses, dizzy.

"Are you left-footed, too?" Brittany teases, dipping Santana lower than she's gone before. Another thrill swoops through Santana's body and she laughs for it. Brittany grins. "I like this dance," she says simply.

(It sounds like something else.)

* * *

><p>The girls make it through two reels, a waltz, and a strathspey with just the two of them. As it turns out, Brittany dances even more cleverly in private, without an audience, than she does on down days in plain view of everyone.<p>

When Santana asks her wherefore, Brittany says she doesn't know but then reconsiders. "You just make everything easier," she observes, shrugging her shoulders and pulling Santana in closer to her. Brittany breathes deeply, and Santana does, too.

(Santana wonders then if it isn't true that people find it easiest to succeed around those who expect them to do so.)

The grass is cool and dark beneath Santana's feet, and music plays in swells through the bleacher slats. Little moths flitter up from the weeds, and fireflies flare like semaphores, electric green, against the recesses of Santana and Brittany's hideaway.

Brittany dances like a dream—or like falling into one, maybe—in ebbs and flows, each step making perfect sense in the tide of her motion, though seemingly without rhyme or reason in itself. Santana nestles her head against Brittany's shoulder and thinks, for a moment, that there is nowhere else she would rather be in the world than here, dizzy, dancing with Brittany.

It would follow that dancing should rile Santana up and rouse her faculties, but somehow it doesn't. Instead, she finds herself so comfortable that she sinks low onto Brittany's shoulder and begins to relax all over. It doesn't surprise her at all when Brittany mirrors her sentiment and yawns, wide, just as sleepy as she is.

"Long day," Santana says, and Brittany nods, agreed.

Without speaking anything of it, Brittany leads Santana out from the shadows to where the moonlight fits though the slats in the latticework and gestures for Santana to lie down with her, side by side, upon the grass. The girls descend slowly and then turn to each other, laid out on the cool earth.

"Thank you," Santana says.

"Thank you," Brittany says back.

(Vaguely, Santana registers that the music has stopped behind them.)

(She hears someone speaking from very far away but can't make out the words.)

Brittany's eyelashes flutter against her cheeks, so like the wings of her butterflies. Under such a bright, argent moon, Santana can see every feature on Brittany's face and marvels a bit at the gold of Brittany's hair and the light freckles that dot the bridge of her nose. Santana is in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, and she feels impossibly, wonderfully lucky for it, when she's never had good luck before now in her life.

"May I kiss you, Britt?" she asks, sleepy.

Though Brittany seems sleepy herself, her eyes light with the same giddy excitement from earlier. She nods, eager.

Santana doesn't sit up. Instead, she leans forward on the grass, hand curling at Brittany's jaw, urging Brittany to meet her where they lie. Brittany does meet her, eyes turning dark and deep with something.

It's a slow kiss, one that starts with pressed lips and slowly becomes about open mouths painting lazy stokes together. Both girls nod into the touch, and Brittany closes her eyes, a smile spreading out over her face as though someone had spilled it there from a jar. She tastes and breathes like sleep already, and Santana loves the feel of her, warm against the blue dark.

A pop goes off overhead, and light blooms, astral, into the first firework of the night.

Santana has never seen fireworks before, but somehow she finds their goings-on in the heavens far less important than her and Brittany's goings-on against the earth.

Several more pops sound, and more fireworks flare, brilliant white, against the darkness. They sear for a moment below the stars and in competition with the moonlight before petering out and fading away, leaving behind naught but skeletal smoke in their wake, fossils of great celestial spiders, spindly and bent.

"Happy Glorious Fourth, Brittany," Santana mumbles, no longer sure if she's awake or dreaming.

Brittany thumbs over her ribs. "Happy Glorious Fourth, Santana," she mumbles back.

They kiss and kiss and kiss until they're both just on the brink of dreaming. Brittany murmurs, "Thank you," against Santana's lips again and Santana says at the same time, "Brittany, do you—do you maybe—do you l—?" but both of their voices trail away at once.

(And suddenly they're fallen to sleep.)

* * *

><p>Santana awakens to a prod in the ribs.<p>

"Britt—?" she says, struggling between waking and sleeping, her mind still heavy from her last dream, whatever it was.

She opens her eyes to find the night much darker than it was when she fell to sleep. Clouds have rolled in to cover the moon, and all the lights from the big top tent have gone out. The bleachers overhead cast deep, black shadows over everything. Santana can scarcely see anything, let alone Brittany, but she feels Brittany's body hovering over her own, with Brittany's arms on either side of her, buoying Brittany up.

"Shh," Brittany says, moving—Santana assumes—to draw a finger to her own lips.

Santana's thoughts swim. She tries to remember where she is and what she's doing, but can't come up with anything except that she knows she's been with Brittany all night.

"What?" she says, disoriented.

"Shh," Brittany warns again. "Listen."

And Santana does.

Crickets chirp along the grass, and little rustlings stir—mysteries—through the dark. Wind prowls low to the earth but gentle. But then, voices. Male voices. They're not a long ways off and gruff. One of them sounds throaty and picked upon.

Ken.

Santana can't make out what Ken says, but she knows that he's displeased. She looks in the direction of his voice through the bleachers and past where she knows that the rings stand. Benches and a thick, country blackness obscure her view. She doesn't doubt her ears, though.

Brittany nods, her hair brushing over Santana's face, confirming what Santana hears. Silently, Brittany peels her body from Santana's and clambers to her feet. Once she has her balance, she reaches for Santana and lifts her up, as well. Blood rushes to Santana's head, and she feels impossibly dizzy, but, thankfully, she doesn't fall; Brittany holds her steady.

Santana's back aches from lying on the ground, and it cracks as she stands up straight, but otherwise she remains silent. In the next second, she and Brittany link hands and walk quickly but quietly toward the latticework upholding the bleachers. Brittany threads herself through a slat with all the deftness of an expert seamstress stringing her needle, her motions both fluid and feline, and then offers a hand back to Santana, coaxing her through the same space, helping her to mind her skirts.

Once the girls stand safely beyond the bleachers and the big top, Brittany checks both left and right, and then pauses, listening in the direction from which she and Santana last heard Ken. Santana holds her breath and counts out ten beats in her mind. She can't hear Ken or his companion anywhere, and apparently neither can Brittany.

"Come on," Brittany breathes, offering Santana her hand. She starts off in a southwesterly direction, intending, Santana realizes, to head toward Santana's tent.

But Santana stops her.

"Britt," she breathes, "we should get you home first." Brittany opens her mouth to protest, but Santana won't allow it. "Your father," Santana says firmly, and whatever fight Brittany has in her dies away. Without another word, Brittany changes direction, headed to the northwest toward her own tent. Santana gives her hand a squeeze, and Brittany squeezes back.

Once the girls clear the billboard partition, which seems more haunted than beautiful under the darkness of night, they both relax, and Brittany swings their hands between them.

"I wish we didn't have to go away from each other," she pouts, rounding the corner behind Mr. Adams' business tent.

"Me, either," Santana agrees.

(She realizes that they both mean much more than they can say.)

They stop just beyond the Pierces' door, holding hands with each other. Without speaking, they both lean in at once and kiss each other, sweet and slow—a real goodnight kiss, and one that helps Santana to remember all their other kisses throughout the night. Brittany thumbs over Santana's palms and looks at her very carefully, though it's still too dark for either one of them to see the other person well. Brittany's lips rest just at the corner of Santana's mouth, so close that Santana breathes Brittany's breath.

"Goodnight," Brittany says, though it sounds like nothing quite as simple as that.

"Goodnight," Santana repeats.

They part from each other with as much reluctance as met magnets, holding onto each other's hands for as long as they can until Brittany shifts back the tent flaps and starts to let herself inside. Santana takes a few steps away, not wanting to disturb anything as Brittany sneaks into her bed. But then something snags on Santana's heart, and she finds she can't help herself.

"Britt," she whispers, helpless. "Britt, I—I love you."

Santana can scarcely see Brittany's face through the darkness, but she can somehow feel it when Brittany starts to grin. A warmth spreads out between them, radiant as a blush. Brittany's hand moves from the tent canvas to touch her own heart, and Santana feels sweet inside, like she just did something good.

(Like good things will come to her.)

She can hear the queer, secret sort of smile in Brittany's voice when Brittany speaks.

"I know. Thank you."

Though Santana might have panicked at such a simple reply just a few days or even a few hours ago, she feels nothing but peace for it tonight, and gratitude, too, low in her bones. She nods her head and starts away.

"Goodnight, Brittany."

"Goodnight, Santana."

_(El amor es sufrido. Cosas buenas vienen a aquellos que esperan.)_

_(Las mejores cosas, realmente.)_

* * *

><p>As Santana wanders back to her own tent, she hums snatches of the patriotic songs that the circus band played for the spectacular interspersed with the tune about her sweet little girlie. She feels sleepy and stupid and wonderful, and she can't seem to stop smiling her brightest Brittany-smile. She knows that maybe she should worry that Brittany won't say that she loves her back, but somehow she doesn't.<p>

Brittany knows that Santana loves her and seems happy about it, and Santana knows the way that Brittany's touch and kisses feel to her, and how Brittany's words sound, and that's enough for Santana right now.

It's perfect, actually.

She sings as she comes to her tent door.

_To be married, we're old enough, plenty,  
><em>_she and I,  
><em>_she and I_

_She's eighteen and I'll be twenty,  
><em>_by and by,  
><em>_by and by_

_Although we are short as to money,  
><em>_what care we,  
><em>_what care we?_

_There are just two flies in the honey  
><em>_just my one little girl and me_

It takes Santana a minute to fidget with the canvas, so tired are her fingers and clumsy her motions, but eventually she manages to work the flaps and comes into her tent, more ready for sleep than she can say. She starts to doff her bangles, hating the way that they chaff on her wrists, and then rubs at her eyes, pushing out a yawn.

It's only when she looks to the bed that she sees.

There, silhouetted in the darkness, sits Puck, wide awake and upright. He's only a shadow, his features hidden in deep black. His posture is stiff. Mean.

When he speaks, he does so through gritted teeth.

"'Evening, ladybird."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Thank you all for waiting patiently for this chapter! I hope that its length will make up a bit for the delay. Special thanks to Han for going above and beyond the call of awesome in her beta duties. Also, special thanks to Lu for being a Spanish-speaking goddess.<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**Solo sé honesta, Santana : Just be honest, Santana**_

_**"La práctica lo hace perfecto, Britt" : "Practice makes perfect, Britt"**_

_**El amor es sufrido, Santana, y es benigno : Love is patient, Santana, and love is kind**_

_**(El amor es sufrido. Cosas buenas vienen a aquellos que esperan) : (Love is patient. Good things come to those who wait)**_

_**(Las mejores cosas, realmente) : (The best things, really)**_


	13. Sad Clowns and Happy Endings

**Chapter 11: Sad Clowns and Happy Endings**

**Tuesday, July 5th, 1898: Independence, Iowa**

There's a dread stillness to Puck, like dark clouds before thunder.

It startles Santana to find him still awake and waiting for her, even so many hours after the spectacular has ended. Somehow, she had forgotten about him. Somehow, she always does.

Her heart kicks in her chest. "You scared me," she gasps, drawing a hand to the beat as if her touch might slow it.

Of course, Santana should have known that Puck would be waiting for her at the tent—after all, he lives there, just as she does, and he can't always ride the rails as a hostler on nights when Santana falls asleep in Brittany's arms.

It would be too easy if he did.

(Somehow, Santana hadn't expected that she would see Puck again tonight.)

(Foolish.)

Puck says nothing.

Though Santana can't see Puck's eyes, she feels him staring at her through shadow, scrutinizing her form and bearing as if she were something that he suddenly realizes he has always mistaken, like a familiar street sign misread every day for years until someone points out the true lettering.

After a full moment, Puck rises from the cot, posture rigid against the darkness. In a single stride, he meets Santana, towering before her, head near the apex of the tent. On impulse, Santana takes a step back from him.

Now she isn't just startled but frightened.

Puck doesn't seem like himself.

The darkness over the room turns almost palpable and thick. Before Santana can say anything more, Puck moves, snatching Santana's wrist out of the air. When he catches Santana, he holds her arm fast and with an iron grip, keeping her tethered to him, like a ship to a dock.

At first, Santana thinks that Puck might strike her, but he doesn't. His anger is controlled and self-contained, like a loaded gun, but not a shot one. He yanks Santana closer to him—close enough that his body heat washes over her. She can smell his usual choking, herbal musk on his hands, as well as tin smoke.

Fireworks.

Animal dread floods through her. "Ow! Let go of me!" she yelps.

Puck cuts her off with a snarl. "Do you think I'm stupid, ladybird?!" He grabs her by the other elbow, hard, pinioning her body to his.

Santana doesn't know what's happening—only that Puck thinks that she's done something to deceive him. She splutters and tries to pull away from his hold. "What are you doing?" she balks.

"You think you're so smart, and I'm so dumb, don't you?"

Puck uses Santana's own momentum to spin her toward the cot and then forces her to sit down, hard. He drops her left arm but still clutches her right.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Santana protests. She quakes all over and still fights against Puck's hand. She has to get away from him. She hates that she can't see his eyes through such pitch.

"You're green-gowning it while I pay your way through everything!" Puck bellows. "You think that's fair, ladybird? You think that's how it is? I'm not a fool!"

Santana's heart pricks in her chest, sprinting faster and harder than ever it has before. She doesn't know what Puck means, just that he's livid about whatever it is. She feels hot all over and trapped with no place to run. The darkness inside the tent seethes, both infinitely deep and terribly small at once. Santana can't breathe.

(Surely, someone must hear all this shouting.)

Santana struggles for air. She tries to tell Puck that she doesn't understand him, but her voice disappears in a squeak, her throat closing as tears leap to her eyes. "Wha—?" she stammers.

"Green-gowning! Committing adultery! Fornicating!" Puck shouts. "You're fornicating with Sam Evans when you're supposed to be married to me!"

_Oh God._

Puck's accusation echoes through the tent. Its knell rings through Santana's body. How could Puck think such a horrid thing? Santana isn't fornicating with Sam. She couldn't possibly do so. She wouldn't. She doesn't even know how.

Since joining the circus, Santana hasn't spoken more than two words to Sam unsupervised anyhow. In fact, she hasn't spoken to him unsupervised at all since the day when Sam helped her to pack up the tent—and only then because Puck himself had left her on her own when she needed him.

Sam is in love with Ma Jones. Santana is in love with Brittany.

Santana's stomach turns over. She'll be sick if Puck keeps saying such awful words. She wants to make some sort of defense of herself—she wants to tell Puck how very wrong he is and to reprove him for thinking evil thoughts about her—but she can't. She paws at his hand against her arm, desperate to pry his fingers from her skin.

"F-fornicating?" she repeats.

Santana's voice sounds unnaturally high and stretched to breaking. She almost can't force herself to say the word. Her face flares with heat, contorted into a strange, aching expression. She blinks and blinks and blinks against the darkness, but to no avail; fat tears gather at the corners of her eyes and roll down her cheeks. She couldn't hold them back if she tried. She can't stop trembling. Her heart beats like it wants to burst straight from her chest.

(She supposes that this is what being hysterical must feel like.)

"You think I'm f-fornicating with Sam?" she squeaks. Her voice breaks into a sob, "No! No! I would never! I'd never!" Puck tightens his grip on Santana's arm. "I've never known a man! I never—! I couldn't—! I've never kissed another man but you! Please!"

"You ran off tonight!" Puck shoots back. "You and Evans weren't nowhere around! You'll smile at all his jokes and talk pretty to him, but you won't even look twice at me unless you want me to buy you something! You mean to tell me you weren't with him?"

"I wasn't!"

Santana's tears start to curl over the edge of her chin, wetting her neck and collarbones. She still can't breathe and can't move—only plead with Puck to hear reason.

"What about the town boys? The gillies, then? You weren't with none of them?" Puck insists, dead set on the idea that Santana must have gone sneaking around with some boy.

(She would never.)

"No! I was with Brittany!" Santana cries, clinging to the truth. "I was with Brittany! Please! Please! We fell asleep!"

Santana can feel Puck's confusion and frustration mounting as she denies each one of his mad accusations in turn. He wants her to have done something wrong and bears down on her for it.

When he does so, it surprises Santana to hear hurt in his voice.

Tears.

"Then why won't you ever just be with me?" he cries. "Why can't you stand to be around me? Why won't you kiss me or let me hold you?"

_Because I'm in love with Brittany._

It's a simple answer and the truth, but Santana knows better than to tell it to Puck, not with him so wounded and already hating her for avoiding him, though he saved her life and brought her away from New York City to the circus.

"Answer me, ladybird!" Puck roars. "Why won't you—?"

"Because I'm not married to you! We're not married!" Santana shrieks.

Her voice frays, raw, in her throat and she chokes on more tears. In that moment, she thinks back to all the times when Puck has kissed her and almost gags for it. She can't stand the feel of Puck's lips on hers or his hands touching her skin, not when she belongs with Brittany and to Brittany in every possible way.

Santana had only needed Puck but never wanted him.

She doesn't want him.

"I can't," Santana sobs, running up against that invisible wall inside of herself, "I can't, I can't—"

She can feel her chest closing up, tightening, her whole self locking against Puck and against anyone who isn't Brittany. She can't breathe, not around the lump in her throat, not when Puck is so close and so mean. Her body reviles against him.

"—I'm not married to you and I don't want—I don't w-want—"

Everything slows.

For the first time since he started shouting, Puck looks at Santana, deep and slow. Though they can't meet one another's eyes through the darkness, Santana feels Puck scrutinizing her again, appraising what she's told him. Briefly, Santana wonders if Puck won't strike her after all, and she braces for it, waiting to feel the blow through her bones.

It doesn't come, though.

Instead, Puck's grip slackens against Santana's wrist.

Softens.

The thunder in the room disperses to calm, as if Santana had somehow spoken a magic word against it or finally explained herself in some way that Puck could understand. When next Puck speaks, his voice sounds entirely different than it did before, suddenly quiet and worried.

"Oh no, ladybird, don't cry," Puck says softly. "Oh, hey, I didn't mean it. Hey, now. Hey."

In the next second, Puck presses closer to Santana, his lips skirting along the edge of her jaw in a sorry, sloppy kiss. His one hand drops to her leg, propping him up as he kneels before her. His other hand moves to the underside of Santana's chin, lifting her head to him.

"Ladybird, God! I am so sorry. I would never—"

He stops, considering his words. After a long time, he speaks again. He sounds sure and soothing.

"Ladybird," he whispers, "I swear that I would never do to you what my old man did to my old lady. I wouldn't get you like that and then leave you. I couldn't leave you or anybody else of ours, either—I'd die first. We don't have to be together like that, ladybird, not now. There're other things we can do. I can teach you. You're my family, ladybird. Shh, please, don't cry, don't cry."

He kisses at her neck, slowly sitting up from his knees to join her on the cot.

The danger has passed—Santana knows that. Puck isn't angry with her anymore. She still can't keep from trembling, though. She doesn't know what Puck means exactly, but she does know that she hates the sound of the promises he makes to her.

(She fidgets with the thread ring on her finger.)

"I want—," she cries, but she can't say the name she means aloud, not with such a great ache in her throat, not with Puck still pressing into her. She shivers away from his lips wet on her neck.

"You're shaking," Puck realizes. "Jesus."

He crawls onto the cot and takes Santana in his arms. His whole body enfolds hers, his hot, vivid smell filling up her nostrils and mouth. She would flinch away from him, but she finds that she can't. Like the mouse scared of a hawk, she halts and hunkers, helpless to do anything else.

"I wouldn't do no harm by you ever," Puck promises, his voice suddenly boyish again. "I'm so, so sorry, ladybird. I've got you," he whispers, kissing her head. "Things'll be different one day. You and me, we'll go somewhere. We'll travel, visit Europe. You know they have ballrooms in Vienna with flowers and waterfalls in 'em, even in the winter, and anyone can dance there? Anyone at all? One day, you and me, we'll go to Vienna, and there ain't nobody who'll look at us slanted. I'll take you dancing in Vienna. You and me, until morning's light, ladybird. It'll be a new century, and everything'll be different."

Santana tries to understand, but she can't. Just a few seconds ago, Puck seemed liable to throw her out of their tent to the road, but now he wants to take her globetrotting with him. If there has ever been a more volatile man than Puck, Santana wouldn't believe it. She stills in his arms, swallowing hard. She can't help but feel somehow sad.

(She just wants Brittany.)

* * *

><p>Puck holds Santana for a long, long while. His heartbeat goes from quick to metered, a song finding its best time. He dots little kisses to Santana's hair and keeps her pressed to the crook of his neck and at his chest, as if she were a doll and he the little child who cherished her. Though his body is still strong and hard, it's also gentle, as is he. He wipes the tears from Santana's cheeks with the edge of his thumb.<p>

After many minutes, he asks, "Ladybird, will you forgive me?"

He sounds like he'll die if she doesn't.

Santana searches inside herself and through herself, as might a patron at a vast library, seeking a particular book located somewhere amidst many, many tall shelves.

Can she forgive Noah Puckerman for the way that he frightened her? Can she forgive him for the false accusations he leveled at her expense? Has she catalogued that elusive title anywhere inside her heart?

Santana knows that both her grandmother and her grandmother's bible would tell her that she ought to forgive Puck, but Santana never believed like her grandmother did, and the Bible is one book about which Santana can't seem to care.

Her heartbeat still runs mouse-quick. Puck's smell and presence overwhelm her. She hears the echo of all the terrible things Puck said about her, loud and vociferous, in her ears.

And it's strange.

Santana hasn't committed any of the crimes that Puck tried to pin upon her tonight, but she does feel, in a way, wrong.

Though she hasn't kissed Samuel Evans or any gilly boys, she has kissed Brittany Pierce, and while that in itself isn't a wicked thing—it's wholly good, Santana knows, for she can feel the goodness of it inside herself, changing her for the better—maybe the fact that Santana hasn't told Puck that she kissed Brittany is.

Maybe it is deceitful of her. Maybe she ought to have told him. Maybe Puck could have been happy for her if she had given him the truth outright.

There's a reason why Santana never wants to kiss Puck, after all.

(Sometimes it's easier not to have the thing one wants when one knows the reason why one can't have it.)

(Santana strokes over the thread ring at her finger, absentminded.)

For Puck's question, Santana tries, for a moment, to picture how it would be, telling Puck the truth, just like she told it to Brittany earlier in the day. What if she revealed to Puck that she was in love with Brittany? What if she explained to Puck that she only ever wanted to kiss Brittany and not him? She tries to envisage herself whispering the words into the dark against the heat of Puck's skin. Somehow, she can't imagine that Puck would smile or seem as giddy as Brittany did to hear the truth, though.

Fear pricks her heart.

She can't whisper such a secret as that one to Puck, not even here, in deep shadow.

Puck isn't the person to whom Santana tells her secrets.

(Brittany would never, ever frighten Santana in the way that Puck did tonight.)

The practical part of Santana realizes that she can't tell Puck the truth. Even so, she feels a keen sense of guilt, for now she knows that she has chosen to deceive Puck, and that she will continue to deceive him for the rest of her days at the circus.

She will always only take from him and never give anything to him in return.

Right then, Santana resolves in her heart to try to treat Puck more kindly than she has in the past. She also resolves to forgive him, though perhaps he doesn't deserve it.

It's the one thing she can do.

"Of course I forgive you," she whispers, and only then does Puck's body fully relax against hers.

"Thank you," Puck says, kissing her hair, sweet, in benediction.

Santana allows Puck to hold her for a long, long while, and even to fall back against the cot, still holding her, as both of them drift toward sleep. Eventually, Santana's heartbeat begins to slow. She breathes in deeply and stills herself as Puck's arms gather her in closer to him.

(Really, there's nothing wrong with Noah Puckerman, as far as circus boys go, but Santana Lopez just can't fuss about him. She never has been able to.)

* * *

><p>Santana awakens to coffee smell, rich and earthy. It reminds her of her father and of the bachelor cottage. For a moment, she forgets where she is and wonders if her grandmother won't scold her for sleeping late again. She thinks, still mostly dreaming, that maybe she and Brittany can spend the afternoon together in the garden, as long as they promise Abuela that they won't pester the new gardener boy, Puck.<p>

But then Santana remembers that she isn't at the bachelor cottage and that Papa and Abuela aren't with her, and neither is Brittany, for the time being. Her face rubs against rough canvas rather than a lace pillowcase. A heavy hand rests upon her shoulder.

"I brought you some breakfast," Puck says in a small voice, half-whispering and half-speaking, like he isn't certain whether he actually wants to wake Santana or not.

Santana groans against the cot and shifts. She dislikes it when Puck wakes up so much earlier than she does. Somehow, it makes her feel useless, lazy, and also weirdly bare, knowing that he's watched her sleep, even for a little while. She forces herself to sit upright.

"Is it time to go to the train?" she mumbles, accepting the warm tin cup that Puck passes into her hands though she can't see either it or him through the darkness—only shadows and a single beam of moonlight peeking through parted tent flaps.

"Not yet, ladybird," Puck says placidly. He pets her hair away from her shoulder and sets a plate and fork in her lap. Eggs and hotcakes. "You've got time to eat your meal."

Santana nods, still addlebrained and not up to talking. It feels like hardly any time has elapsed since she fell asleep, and yet she can hear camp sounds and stirring beyond the tent doors, telling her that the night is over and that a new day at the circus has begun.

Birds titter somewhere in the distance. Santana's face feels tight from crying last night. When she swallows, her throat scratches. She takes a gulp of coffee, hoping to wet away the ache.

"Will you ride with me on the train today, ladybird?" Puck asks.

He sounds like he'll die if she says no.

Yesterday or the day before, Santana might have declined Puck's offer, if she thought that she could get away with it, but now she doesn't feel as if she can do so—not in good conscience. Last night, Santana resolved to treat Puck with more kindness, and she has to start on her resolution sometime, after all.

"Of course I will," she promises.

She can't see Puck smile at her through the darkness, but she can feel him do it.

* * *

><p>Santana watches Puck dismantle their tent and then follows him to the mess pit to put away her dishes. Under the firelight from Ma Jones' hearth, Santana sees how red Puck's eyes look—and tired, too. She also finds something like quiet determination set into his jaw.<p>

For his part, Puck treats Santana carefully, like the little boy whose mother has instructed him to set out the best china in the dining room for guests. He takes Santana by the elbow when they walk together and lets her go in first to every place they visit, all but holding invisible doors for her, and bowing to her when he can.

When Santana glances at Puck, he smiles at her, grateful in a way that nags at Santana, twisting guilt low into her stomach. She tries to tell herself that she'll be better to Puck and that things will be all right.

(All the same, she can't help but scan over the crowds for Brittany, hoping hard to find her.)

Strong wind chases the company all the way to the train depot, lifting the ladies' hair from their shoulders and threatening to steal the men's hats away as everyone clings to the sides of their wagons and carts. The wind is warm and whistles against the slats in the lion cages, but it still somehow feels lonely and like it takes more than it gives.

When Santana spots some of her and Puck's neighbors from the white city riding in an adjacent cart to theirs, she finds that though no one will meet her eyes, everyone can't help but stare at her. A whisper catches on the wind, and Santana doesn't have to hear it to know exactly what it says.

She looks up at the stars, taking in the carnival constellations and sleepless planets. After a moment, she closes her eyes to the black expanse. All the while, Puck's hand rests at the small of her back, keeping her in place.

As the circus processional reaches the end of the main street in town, Methuselah heaves a baleful wail to the stars, and every head turns to him, waiting for something, though nothing comes.

(Ackley, Iowa was such a place where everything happened all in a rush.)

* * *

><p>It's only once the company reaches the depot that Santana finds Brittany amidst the crowd, sleepy and with a ragged flannel blanket wrapped around her shoulders.<p>

Just for seeing her, a great swell of relief blooms in Santana's chest. Suddenly, Santana feels, somehow, like Odysseus come home at last after such a long while spent away from Ithaca—from Penelope—though she knows that, in truth, only a few hours have passed since last she and Brittany parted ways.

Her first impulse is to throw her arms over Brittany's shoulders and to tell Brittany all at once about what happened between her and Puck before bedtime, but then she thinks better of it, remembering where she is and who watches her. Her feet slow from their run. She can't do as she pleases, not with so many people around, and especially not with Puck standing off to the side.

Instead, she does all that she can do, given her audience.

She goes over to Brittany and slips their pinky fingers together. "I missed you," she says, meaning much more than just that.

Brittany's eyes look a fathomless and storm-tossed blue under the electric lamps hung along the platform. She glances between Puck and Santana, and, for a second, seems almost to know something about them and what transpired in their tent last night.

"I missed you, too," she says, loud enough for Puck to hear it. Then, smiling at Santana, "Will you ride with me on the train?"

* * *

><p>They ride in silence.<p>

Santana leans back against Puck but drapes her legs over Brittany's lap beneath the flannel blanket. Within the four walls of the boxcar, the world seems a still life painting, static and chiaroscuro. Beyond the boxcar doors, it seems a blur of motion, all greens and golds and goodly earth tones muted under predawn blue.

Brittany stares at Santana for a long, long time before burrowing her hands under the blanket. Without a word, she begins to stroke over Santana's legs, massaging the undersides of Santana's knees and then Santana's anklebones. She searches out Santana's soft and hard places, tracing over the furrows between Santana's muscles and the sinews which bind Santana together deep below the skin.

Her move is a bold one, fearless and familiar in a way that no one has ever been with Santana before. Brittany acts as if her hands belong just where they are—and they do, Santana finds.

At Brittany's touch, a tight coil inside Santana begins to unwind, though Santana hadn't realized that it existed until now.

Santana relaxes.

She softens.

Breathes.

It's almost as if Brittany has cast some fairy spell over her, though whether it were to set her into an enchanted sleep or to wake her from one, she cannot say. All she knows is that for the first time since walking Brittany home last night, she finally feels at peace.

Safe.

As the first light of morning peeks through the boxcar doors, illuminating the cabin, Brittany offers Santana a concerned look, like a hostess who can see that her newly arrived guest has traveled for a great while and over a very treacherous road. She pulls Santana's knees up toward her body, resting them against her belly, and then starts to draw over Santana's legs, little curlicues and nothings at first—and then, at last, a heart.

She offers Santana a small smile, comforting and careful, asking Santana without words if she's all right. Santana returns the smile easily; she is now and she will be. Brittany nods and hums a little note, neither major nor minor. She draws another heart on Santana's leg.

If Puck notices anything going on between the two girls, he says nothing of it; instead, he stares blankly out the open boxcar door, lost somewhere behind his own eyes.

Gradually, some of the quiet excitement from yesterday begins to shine in Brittany's countenance, as if the sunrise were putting it there. It glints in Brittany's tiger flecks and lifts at the corners of her mouth.

When Brittany checks to see that Puck has his back turned and then quickly dips her head to press a kiss against Santana's kneecaps through the blanket, Santana shivers, caught up, because she feels the excitement, too.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths.

_Hi_, Santana mouths back.

The two girls smile at each other, their excitement shifting into something more like wiliness. Brittany glances at Puck again and then back at Santana. She takes care to enunciate.

_How do you say... 'Welcome to the circus' in Spanish?_

_Bienvenidos al circo._

_Bent tent poles all circled?_

_Not even close._

_Not even a little bit?_

_Nope._

_How about... 'You're not fair'?_

_No eres justa._

_No air is... hostlers? No? He'll go? Hugo?_

_Who's Hugo, Britt?_

_I dunno. Somebody who speaks Spanish?_

_No eres justa, Britt._

_No, you aren't._

They ride all the way to their destination holding hands under the blanket.

Puck never suspects a thing.

* * *

><p>When Santana asks him about their current location, Puck says that they're in Independence, Iowa. He also says that Independence, Iowa boasts one of the best horseracing tracks he's ever seen. When Santana asks Puck what makes the track so very exceptional, Puck stammers a bit and then explains—in a faltering way—that it's big and shaped like a kite with round edges.<p>

(Santana wonders if Puck knows very much about horseracing at all.)

It seems to take a longer time than usual for the supes to get all the circus equipment sorted out at the station. The company ends up standing about during the lag, not certain what to do for it. Brittany runs off for a moment to relinquish her blanket to her father but quickly returns to Santana's side, joining Santana and Puck on the peripheries of the company.

While everyone loiters about waiting for the supes to ready the wagons, Puck acts fidgety and like he would prefer to be somewhere other than where he is. He keeps glancing over the heads of the other circus folk and tugging at the brim of his hat. After a few minutes, he takes Santana gently by the elbow, closing the distance between them so that she can hear what he has to say over all the company's babble.

Brittany hangs back from Santana and Puck's private conference, wearing a furrowed brow.

"All right, ladybird," Puck says, leaning down close to Santana. "I've got some business to attend to, so I'm going to go on ahead now. You and Brittany stick with the company for the parade. I'll find you later."

He doesn't wait for Santana to either question him or tell him goodbye before he releases her and starts off through the crowd, headed to where some supes have circled up the circus horses. Santana quickly loses sight of him amidst so many tall persons and so much helter-skelter motion.

"Where's he going?" Brittany asks, taking Puck's place at Santana's side.

"I don't know," Santana says honestly.

The truth is that while Santana usually finds Puck very plain, today he seems strange to her—a mystery with an ending that she isn't sure she wants to read. Something has gotten into him. He comes across as somehow different than he has been before, though Santana isn't sure if the change in him is for the worse or for the better.

The rambling apology that Puck made to her last night lingers in her thoughts, though it escapes her understanding. She would perhaps ask Puck to explain what he said to her, but the fact is that she's never has been able to talk to him, either to find anything worthwhile in what he says or to entice him to listen to her whatsoever.

In some way, Santana feels that she's missed something with Puck, though she can't name what that something is precisely. She only hopes that missing it won't get her into trouble.

Maybe she can ask Brittany about it later.

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana ride into town hanging from the side of a farm wagon along with Blaine, Rory, and a handful of the boys' clown friends. Everyone packs in tightly together, their bodies hot under the morning brightness, their elbows touching and their feet all lined up upon the bottom rail of the vehicle.<p>

Independence is a handsome town, smart in brown and red brick. White awnings unfold above the shop doors and arched windows cause the store fronts to all seem somehow shocked. Everywhere Santana looks, American flags drape over ledges and hang above intersections, leftover from festivities of the Glorious Fourth, no doubt.

The citizens of Independence greet the circus parade from the backs of black buggies, dressed up in finery and with their hats at jaunty angles. The women wear rouge and have beautiful dark lips. They wave white handkerchiefs at the circus folk, and Santana feels all aflutter for it. The men seem quietly and staunchly pleased to have such revelry visit their little milieu, and the children all cheer, delighted by the parade pomp.

Just when Santana thinks that she couldn't like the parade much more than she already does, Brittany leans over to her.

"I have a secret," she whispers in Santana's ear, mischief in her voice.

Santana's whole self perks up. "What kind of secret, BrittBritt?" she asks.

Of course, Santana knows that Brittany's secret could as a matter of fact concern just about anything, whether it were some new bit of circus magic or something much more pressing, even. Knowing that Brittany could very well say anything doesn't stop Santana from wanting Brittany to say something in particular, though.

Brittany did kiss Santana after Santana confessed to loving to her, after all.

_(Please say you love me back. Please.)_

Santana oughtn't to hope for too much, she knows. She oughtn't to set her heart on one thing.

It's just that Brittany seems so excited, is all—so breathless and fond, with her lips parted like the middlemost bloom of a flower and pink brilliant upon her cheeks. She looks more at Santana than at anything going on with the parade, even though the gillies along the sidewalks holler at her to wave at them.

Santana shouldn't allow her heart to stop just from Brittany looking at her, but.

Only.

"What kind of secret indeed, Miss Pierce?" Blaine asks amiably.

He lifts up the brim of his trilby hat to get a better look at both Brittany and Santana, and, just for a second, Santana finds that she hates him—and also that she hates Mrs. Schuester and Ma Jones and Roderick Remington, who aren't even present, but who would all probably interrupt Brittany from saying her secret, just like Blaine has, if they were so.

(It's exceedingly difficult to carry on a secret romance with someone when everyone and everything in the world always seem to disrupt it.)

Brittany's expression changes from a cat-smile to blankness in a trice, a slate wiped clean.

"I said I have a secret," she repeats slowly, frowning at Blaine as if he's interjected an especially nonsensical thought into the conversation. Then, "If I told you what it was, it wouldn't be a secret anymore."

Santana knows Brittany well enough to see Brittany's statement for what it is, namely, for Brittany putting Blaine off her trail on purpose, like a wily fox running loop-de-loops to evade an obnoxious hunting hound.

Blaine doesn't know Brittany very well at all, though, and so he doesn't discern her trick.

"Aw, you're no fun!" he says, slapping at the wagon sideboards.

Santana wants to say that Blaine is the one who's no fun, or at least that he's the one who's ruined her fun and the moment—confound him!—but she knows she oughtn't to snap. She heaves a sigh and rests her brow against the side of the wagon, defeated, closing her eyes to the morning light and wishing and wishing and wishing for things.

(She knows she shouldn't get her hopes up for anything in particular.)

(But.)

* * *

><p>Santana somehow misses it when the wagon draws to a halt. She also misses it when Blaine, Rory, and the other clowns disembark from the wagon. She doesn't miss it when Brittany sets a hand on her shoulder, though.<p>

"You okay in there?"

Santana peeks out from behind her arm to find Brittany's face directly parallel to hers, rested against the wagon rail. Brittany's eyes look especially soft, as does her smile. Once Brittany sees that she has Santana's attention, she scrunches up her nose at Santana, only lopsidedly, with her one cheek still pressed against the wood grain.

(Santana feels a sweet pang play through her chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

Brittany strokes Santana's hair away from her face and traces along the edge of Santana's jaw. Her touch feels careful and welcome upon Santana's skin.

"I'm all right," Santana says. "I just wish there weren't so many people around us all the time."

Brittany nods, understanding. "Me, too."

The girls remain in their places upon the wagon, Brittany petting through Santana's hair and Santana loving Brittany's touch and loving Brittany beyond words. Santana hums from the back of her throat. The wood heat and Brittany's easy strokes cause her to feel lazy and even just a little bit sleepy.

"How long do you think we could stay here without anyone finding us?"

"Probably only a few minutes."

"You really think it would take that long?"

Both girls laugh and sit up from where they rest, squinting into the sunlight. For the most part, the company has already vacated the wagon bay. Only a handful of supes and some stray midway vendors stand around, tending to vehicles, goods, and animals.

Brittany hops down from the wagon rail first, landing lightly upon the dirt. She offers a hand to Santana, and Santana takes it, feeling like a noblewoman escorted from her coach. As soon as Santana has her footing upon the earth, Brittany gives her a twirl, dancing her in the direction of the camp.

"I like the way your skirt flips," Brittany says, just so, and Santana laughs because Brittany always finds the most peculiar things about her to like.

Only as she and Brittany go along does Santana properly consider her surroundings for the first time.

Independence is a handsome, river-fed land, verdantly green, with tall copses of trees reaching toward the sky and sprawling fields that lead on for miles upon miles. The white city stands partially constructed, still in its middling stages. Company members mill here and there, but none of them pays much mind to Brittany and Santana.

It almost surprises Santana when no one stops her and Brittany to force them into doing chores, but then she remembers what happened between them and Mrs. Schuester at the dressing tent yesterday.

"I suppose Mrs. Schuester won't want to see us anytime soon," Santana mumbles, her cheeks pinking at the memory. "We probably ought to find Ma Jones instead."

Brittany nods. "Probably."

Except.

Brittany and Santana only make it to the first intersection of tents before they happen upon an unusual sight: namely, Mr. Adams away from his business tent, standing out in the open air—and in conversation with Puck, no less.

Both men wear serious expressions. Mr. Adams strokes over his beard with the crux of his hand. He furrows his brow, deep in concentration. Puck seems very businesslike as he speaks, jaw tight with the same determination Santana sensed in him earlier in the morning. He holds his hat in one hand and the reins to a horse in the other. The horse stands behind him, munching grass and flicking its tail at the fat, black flies that dart up from the weeds.

Puck speaks in a very low voice—so low that Santana can't actually hear him, though she strains to do so. He gestures over his shoulder in the direction of the main road back into town, and Mr. Adams nods at him, comprehending.

Santana feels odd watching Puck and Mr. Adams speak with each other, knowing that neither one of them has noticed her presence yet. Apparently, Brittany shares the sentiment, as she glances at Santana, asking without words if they ought to draw closer or at least to make themselves known to the men somehow. However, Santana doesn't get the chance to answer Brittany's question before Puck and Mr. Adams conclude their conversation.

Mr. Adams extends a hand to Puck, and Puck accepts it with a hearty shake. Santana thinks she hears Mr. Adams say, "Good man, Noah," as he claps Puck on the back. The two men break away from each other, seemingly in accord about something, and Puck whistles for his horse, tugging on its reins. Once he has the animal's attention, he starts to lead it away in the direction of the midway pitch.

Brittany and Santana remain where they stand, and Puck doesn't turn around to see them. Though Mr. Adams has the girls directly in his line of sight, he himself pays no mind to them at first. Instead, he retrieves his gold pocket watch from his waistcoat and checks the time, ignoring Brittany and Santana as easily as if they were invisible.

Only after replacing his watch in his waistcoat does Mr. Adams take note that he and Puck had an audience; he stares down the intersection, his eyes locking with Santana's. For just a second, he regards her in the same searching way that he did when she first joined the circus, seeking for something in her expression and person.

Whether he finds that something or not, Santana can't say, for his look is blank and his glance quick. After only just a few seconds, he straightens his shoulders, adjusts his jacket, and heads off in the direction of his business tent, all without saying a word to either Santana or Brittany. Once he disappears from the intersection, the two girls find themselves alone.

"What was that about?" Brittany asks.

"I don't know," Santana says honestly.

She bites her lips into her mouth, considering for a moment. She wants to tell Brittany about her quarrel with Puck, but she doesn't know how to start the conversation.

Brittany notices Santana's preoccupation. "Something on your mind?" she asks, fixing Santana with a curious look.

Santana draws a deep breath, steadying herself. If she speaks too frankly about what happened, she may well start to cry again, and she doesn't want to do that—not when there's nothing to cry about now and not when her crying would only serve to upset Brittany. She searches for evenness in her own self and makes certain she has a secure grasp on it before she answers.

"When I went back to my tent last night, Puck was waiting for me," she says. "He was angry at me for staying out late, and he started shouting and saying awful things to me like you wouldn't believe—"

Lamplight worry ignites behind Brittany's eyes. "Are you all right?" Brittany asks, searching Santana up and down over her arms and face and—Santana notices—around the shells of her ears. Brittany takes a step toward Santana and sets a hand on her forearm. "Santana, was he angry at you because of me?"

Santana shakes her head. "No," she says. "No, it's just—he just—he thought that I was sweet on Sam Evans, that's all."

She tries to make the statement sound simple and nonchalant, amusing even, but she can't exactly manage it. Her words waver somewhere close to the end. She forces a laugh, but it comes out more nervous than mirthful.

Though she hadn't expected it of herself, Santana finds that telling Brittany about Puck's mistake so soon after confessing love to Brittany makes her feel unspeakably anxious, for she doesn't want Brittany to misunderstand or to have any reason to doubt her.

Even though Brittany hasn't yet said that she loves Santana in the same way that Santana loves her, Santana wants Brittany to know that she has all of Santana's heart—always—and that she doesn't have to share it with Sam or Puck or any of those other boys.

Santana's love is unconditional and true.

Something darts behind Brittany's eyes, quick like a fish through murky waters, there and then gone again when Brittany blinks. Brittany glances at Santana, away and then back, her gaze finally settling on where her own hand rests against Santana's wrist—at where the red thread tied at her finger touches upon Santana's skin. When she speaks, her voice is very quiet.

"He doesn't know you very well, does he?" she says.

(It's a big question fit inside a small one.)

Brittany is right, of course.

Puck doesn't know Santana hardly at all, and he doesn't care to learn her, either—not truly or in earnest. He has some skewed idea of Santana that didn't fit the lonely girl cooped up in the bachelor cottage and that certainly doesn't fit the happy girl who runs free at the circus.

Only one person has ever taken the time to know Santana, and sometimes Santana thinks that that person knows her almost better than she knows herself.

Santana had been so lonely in New York, so lonely on the trains that conveyed her to the West, so lonely at the circus camp, and so lonely in her own skin until she met Brittany, who always knows just where to find her and how.

Something inside Santana melts.

"Not at all," she says, reaching down to take Brittany's hand in her own.

Brittany's fingers tangle with Santana's. "So what did you tell him?" she asks, chewing her bottom lip, concerned for Santana in retrospect.

Santana shrugs. "I told him that I spent last night with you."

This time, her statement does sound nonchalant.

Easy.

Brittany smiles with her eyes but not with her lips. She gives Santana's hand a squeeze. "He's not angry at you anymore," she affirms, starting to lead Santana away from the intersection of tents toward the mess pit.

"No," Santana agrees. "He's got a quick temper, but he doesn't stay angry for long."

Brittany nods. "He's always been that way."

It's a simple observation, but one that sparks a question in Santana's mind—a question that's nagged at Santana since Puck made his bizarre apology to her last night in their tent.

Santana supposes that if she and Puck were really married, she would know all sorts of things about him, like where he was born and what he dreamed about doing for his profession when he was a child and whether or not he likes sarsaparilla. As it is, though, she hardly knows anything about him at all.

While she had never cared to know much about Puck before, now she feels curious about him, if only because she wants to understand the strange promises he made to her last night when he held her to him in the darkness.

"Brittany," Santana asks, "was Puck born at the circus?"

Brittany shakes her head. "Nope," she says. "Puck joined up young—about a year after my mama died, I think. He was nine or ten years old, maybe?" Her brow furrows. "You mean Puck never told you about how he got here?"

She looks at Santana in the same way that Sam did on the first day that Santana met him—which is to say in disbelief that Puck would be so negligent in his duties toward Santana. She seems genuinely surprised that Puck wouldn't have told Santana how he got to the circus of his own volition, or, more precisely, that Puck doesn't feel keen to tell Santana all of his secrets in general.

(Santana remembers Brittany's breathless whisper on the farm cart.)

(Brittany loves to give her things.)

"No, he didn't," Santana says, starting to swing her hand and Brittany's between them.

Brittany shakes her head, displeased with Puck's omission, and leads Santana down another corridor of tents. Though she and Santana are seemingly alone, Brittany switches into a low voice and speaks close to Santana's ear, keeping their conversation just between them. She starts her story without prelude.

"Well, Puck had a daddy who only lived with him and his mama sometimes, but then one day Puck's daddy took everything out of Puck's house and went away. Puck and his mama were used to Puck's daddy leaving them every few weeks or so, but this time it was different because Puck's daddy never came home.

The people in Puck's town said that Puck's daddy had run away to join the circus because he was a rambling man and because Puck's mama was wearing her bustle wrong and he couldn't abide it again—only I don't know what that last part has to do with anything because it seems like Puck's daddy could've just asked Puck's mama to change her bustle around if it bothered him so much for her to wear it wrong. I guess that sometimes people don't talk to each other because it's just hard to say what they mean, though.

Anyway, Puck won't admit it to anyone, but he missed his daddy a lot, I think, because, after a while, he ran off, too, and left his mama behind.

Puck knew his daddy had joined a circus, so that's what he went looking for—only he didn't know that there was more than one circus out there.

He found ours, but his daddy wasn't with us.

When he turned up, it was our off-season, and he was half-starved to death. Sam's mama said he was the most ragged little uncivilized thing she had ever seen. That was right around when Arthur Adams got hurt, so Mr. Adams had the doctor he'd hired for Arthur to look over Puck until Puck was well again. Mr. Adams told Puck he could stay on with us until Puck found his daddy, and he even promised that he'd help Puck look for his daddy, if Puck wanted."

Brittany finishes her story with a shrug and then turns silent, letting Santana to think through it.

Honestly, Santana hadn't any ideas about how Puck first joined up with the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus before she had asked Brittany her question, but even with her lack of expectation, Santana finds that she couldn't feel more surprised to learn the truth.

"Golly," she gasps, not sure what to make of what Brittany told her.

It's strange to think about Puck as a little boy, wandering lonely through the countryside in search of the circus. It's stranger still to think of how foolish and forlorn he must have felt to learn that there were more circuses in the world than he could count and that he had found the wrong one even after everything that had befallen him and all his looking.

Puck's apology from last night echoes through Santana's thoughts.

Without meaning to do it, she remembers back to the day when her father's lawyers were set to evict her from the bachelor cottage—of herself sitting beside all of her and her father's and her grandmother's worldly belongings packed into crates, inaccessible to her and piled at the front door, and the whole house empty around her. Puck found her sitting in the bay window of the parlor, looking out over the barren yard. He stared at her like she was the most tragic thing he'd ever seen.

_Want to get away, ladybird?_ he'd asked.

The memory puts a lump into Santana's throat.

Two weeks ago, it would have overjoyed Santana to know that Puck wanted always to care for her—that he thought of her as his family though she had no family of her own—but now Santana can't help but feel as if she has been caught unawares and on the verge of doing something ungrateful, like a person given a very expensive gift for which she has no use.

Puck swore that he would look after Santana upon her father's grave, and so far he has kept to his word both brilliantly and stubbornly.

In her heart of hearts, Santana wishes that he wouldn't, though.

It would make things easier, in a way.

Suddenly, Santana finds that her mouth feels very dry. Guilt twists at her stomach like two tight hands wringing out a wetted rag. She searches for something to say, but can only settle upon a most basic question.

"So Puck never found his father, did he?"

Her voice sounds scratchy to her own ears. She expects Brittany to answer easily—to say of course he didn't—but Brittany never does just as she expects.

"I think he did," Brittany says thoughtfully.

Her answer surprises Santana perhaps more than anything else she's told Santana about Puck so far. Santana quirks an eyebrow, confused.

"Then why is Puck still here?"

Brittany mulls Santana's question for a long while, chewing it over as if it were hard candy in her mouth, but then offers a one-shouldered shrug. "Puck's daddy tried hard to lose Puck," she explains. "Mr. Adams found Puck again."

It should be a simple answer, but somehow it isn't, for when Santana hears it, she can't help but think back on how Puck looked when he first brought her to the business tent to meet Mr. Adams—which is to say as foolish and enthralled as a puppy that had fetched something to please his master.

She also can't help but think of all the times when Puck has seemed lonely or small in her presence, of his little boyishness, and of him hurt when she didn't care to look out over his lights.

For once, Santana thinks that she might understand something about Noah Puckerman.

(Every lost person just wants someone to find him.)

(Every found person knows how it is to love the someone who sought him out and finally brought him safely home.)

Santana feels a pang, just below her ribs. "Puck isn't a bad man," she says quietly.

Brittany stares at her, deep and reverent. "No, he isn't," she agrees.

Of course, Santana knows that she ought to think more of Puck for everything that Brittany told her about him, but somehow she can't help but think of Brittany instead, as always, for it strikes Santana then that one of the infinite things that she loves about Brittany is Brittany's ability to speak so wisely using so very few words.

It also strikes Santana that Brittany is a rare and wonderful sort of person to be able to say thoughtful things about Puck, though she has good reason to not like him.

"Thank you," Santana blurts out without thinking. Brittany's brow scrunches. Santana amends, "For telling me. Thank you for telling me about Puck."

Brittany smiles, only the corners of her mouth turn downward as she does so, rather than up. She wears light in her eyes but also something else, like concern for some difficulty a ways off in the future. "I'm glad that Puck's not angry at you anymore," she says earnestly.

She means much, much more than just that, though.

Her hand squeezes around Santana's, and it occurs to Santana then that sometimes we take care of others when it suits us to do so, and sometimes we take care of them regardless of the circumstances and even at our own expense.

Brittany Pierce is such a girl that she will stand before a board to have her blind father throw knives at her. She also possesses such a heart that she will stand by for other things if it means that the girl she loves has a tent over her head and food to eat and someone to answer for her in the eyes of the law.

Santana strokes over the thread ring at Brittany's finger, absentminded.

Noah Puckerman isn't a bad man, but.

_(El amor es sufrido y es benigno. El amor no tiene el enviada, no hace sinrazón, no se ensancha.)_

_(Para siempre y por siempre, amén.)_

* * *

><p>Having no more reasons to procrastinate their chores, Brittany and Santana finally make their way to the mess pit and commit themselves to Ma Jones' charge.<p>

Whereas normally Ma Jones would find something about Brittany and Santana to grouse at, today she seems in an unusually sunny mood and says nothing harsh to them at all. She doesn't thank the girls for volunteering their services to her, of course, but she does smile at them as she gathers supplies and moves everything over to the kitchen table, humming a tune that sounds suspiciously like last night's schottische song as she does so.

Though she gives Brittany and Santana highly unpleasant tasks to do—Brittany must polish Mr. Adams' best silverware using noxious ammonia, and Santana must strain weevils from the circus flour stocks with a sieve—she does so politely, by her standards.

"Now, Miss Brittany, don' forget to wash each and every fork and spoon twice over, once with the polish and once with the water, then dry 'em off good," Ma says, as breezy as if she were making friendly conversation instead of doling out hard work. "And Santana? Be careful. Make sure you don't miss nothing in there."

"Yes, ma'am."

Ma's fine humor makes it difficult for Brittany and Santana to complain, the ponderousness of their assignments notwithstanding.

"It isn't so bad," Brittany says, though her eyes water when she takes her first whiff of ammonia, and she pulls a sour face once she sees how very many knives and spoons Mr. Adams owns on the whole.

Santana cringes as she sifts several fat, white larvae out of the nearest flour barrel and casts them down onto the grass. She shivers a bit at the sight of the bugs.

"Well, at least she isn't watching us too closely," she says, shrugging and casting a sidelong glance at Ma Jones from across the mess.

Brittany's expression turns from sour to sweet in an instant. "And at least she let me alone with you," she says with her artless lilt. "I like that."

Her statement causes Santana to perk up right away, for it occurs to Santana just then that Blaine the trilby tramp is nowhere around and that Brittany had wanted to tell her something earlier in the day but couldn't only for Blaine's presence. Santana's hand stills at its task.

"BrittBritt," she says, voice high and light.

Brittany looks up at Santana from her place at the table. Santana doesn't know how to ask for what she wants, but she makes a faltering attempt at it anyway.

"This morning on the ride into town, you said you had a secret... and we're alone now... so maybe..."

It surprises Santana when Brittany's face falls before Santana even finishes stating her question. It surprises her even more when Brittany cuts her off entirely.

"I can't."

Santana doesn't mean to panic, of course, but she finds it difficult not to do so considering her hopes concerning the nature of Brittany's secret and also the bluntness of Brittany's statement. Santana's eyes grow wide, and her voice comes out in a squeak.

"Ever?"

Not ever—Santana can see that right away from how Brittany's eyes grow wide, too, and from how Brittany scrambles to answer her.

"No, no!" Brittany says quickly, setting her hand upon Santana's hand, curled over the edge of the flour barrel. "I just mean for right now. I can't tell you right now."

Santana calms for the clarification, but still feels confused. "Why can't you tell me now, Britt?"

Brittany could roll her eyes at Santana's neediness, but she doesn't. Instead, she smiles and shakes her head. "Because," she explains, just so, "it smells like silver polish, and there are weevils everywhere." She scrunches up her nose, half in apology and half to show her point.

The same copper penny feeling that Santana so often gets around Brittany flips over in her for Brittany's expression, but Santana still doesn't follow what Brittany means.

"What? Why does that matter?" she asks.

Now Brittany smiles in earnest, like Santana's just done something she finds particularly precious. A blush roses her cheeks.

"Because," she repeats, "I don't want that to be what you remember when I tell you my secret."

The promise in Brittany's voice causes Santana's flipped copper penny to turn somersaults like one of the Flying Dragon Changs on their trapeze until Santana feels altogether fluttery inside. She knows she shouldn't hope for too much, but Brittany has never disappointed her before, and she can't help but think that she's so, so close to getting just exactly what it is that she wants. She leans further across the flour barrel without meaning to do it.

"Give me a hint?" she pleads.

Brittany laughs at Santana's eagerness. "Nope," she says firmly. "Not until after chores."

_"No eres justa, Britt,"_ Santana pouts.

"Am so," Brittany says.

(Santana's copper penny flips and flips and flips.)

* * *

><p>Santana has never taught anyone to read before, but she figures that it's best to start out with the alphabet, which was the first thing that her father taught her for her schooling. She draws out letters in the grass with her toes.<p>

"That's an... _M_?" Brittany guesses, tracing over the long, converging lines with her eyes.

She wears the most precious, thoughtful frown that Santana has ever seen.

"Close," Santana says, a pricking feeling at her heart. "It's an _N_."

_"N,"_ Brittany repeats, writing out an _N_ of her own upon the tabletop with her thumb so as to commit the letter to memory.

Santana smiles, pleased with Brittany's progress. After only just an hour of lessons, Brittany can already identify about half of the alphabet by sight, making very few mistakes, and is well on her way to learning the remaining letters just as quickly. Santana pauses to strain another sieve full of flour from her latest barrel and rubs her foot over the grass, erasing the _N_ so that she can begin a new letter.

"How about this one?" she quizzes.

"That's an _E_ for Evans," says Sam, swooping into the mess area with a heap of empty burlap sacks slung over his shoulder. He smiles at Brittany and Santana and tips his hat to them.

Like Ma Jones, Sam seems in a particularly happy mood, even by his usual happy standards, and he looks the part for it: his countenance seems almost burnished, scrubbed clean from its usual face paint after the morning parade except for one stray swatch of white upon the chin. His skin looks pink and his eyes look bright, even as he squints against the sunlight. All in all, he has a very pleasant affect.

Even so, not everyone seems pleased at his entrance.

"Sam!" Brittany complains, annoyed at him for his theft. She balls up her polishing rag and tosses it at Sam from behind, but it unfurls midway through the air and flutters harmlessly to the ground like a parachute, well off from hitting its mark or anything else, for that matter.

Sam has the decency to blush. "Sorry," he says, stooping to retrieve the rag before returning it to Brittany. "I didn't mean to steal your letters, Britt. It just looked like a fun game."

"It is a fun game," Brittany assures him.

Only Sam has stopped paying attention to her.

Santana follows his line of vision and sees, for the briefest second, his eyes meet Ma Jones' from across the hearth. For the first time all morning, Ma Jones stops humming her schottische. Shyness curls at her lips, and Sam looks breathless, admiring the roundness of her cheeks and the small, dark prettiness of her eyes.

"Ms. Jones," Sam says, tipping his hat to her, as polite as can be. "Where would you like me to set these sacks?"

"Oh, anywhere is fine," says Ma. Then, remembering herself and her authority, "Put them in the chuck."

"Sure thing," says Sam, tipping his hat again.

(She couldn't explain why if you asked her about it, but Santana likes it very much that, out of all the boys, Sam is always the one who volunteers to do work around the mess pit.)

Only as Sam walks off toward the chuck wagon does Ma Jones notice Santana's attention upon her. She straightens up. "Girl, I best see more sifting and less spelling or else you won't get a lick a' lunch," she warns, though somehow her voice sounds more flustered than threatening.

Santana tries not to smile too widely when she answers. "Yes, miss."

It doesn't take long before Ma resumes humming her schottische.

* * *

><p>Sam lingers around the mess pit after delivering the burlap sacks to the chuck, shrugging and saying that he might as well do so, considering that there isn't much time left until the lunch bell rings anyhow. Santana knows better than to believe in his pretend insouciance, though: he clearly cares more for the company than he does the clock and watches the one far more carefully than he does the other.<p>

Though no one despairs to have Sam about, he does end up getting in the way of both the women and their work, standing where Ma Jones' girls want to set this kettle or that Dutch oven and then taking up too much space at the table, resting his elbows right where Brittany had planned to lay out Mr. Adams' silverware to dry. He wears a dopey, apologetic smirk all the while.

"Sorry," he says when Santana nearly bumps into him, and she rolls her eyes.

(Sam wouldn't be nearly as much of a nuisance around the kitchen if he would just watch where he was going instead of staring after Ma Jones.)

Just before noon, Ma Jones allows Brittany and Santana to pack up their work and tells Brittany that she ought to wash up before lunch, on account of the ammonia. Brittany says, "Yes, miss," and she and Santana go off together, laughing as they round the hearth and slip under the shadows by the wagon.

"What letter does your name start with?" Brittany asks, tugging at the sashes tied on Santana's hips as if they were the cord to a dumbwaiter.

Santana smiles. _"S,"_ she says.

Brittany considers her answer for a moment. "And what letter does my name start with?"

_"B."_

"_S_ and _B_," Brittany repeats, rolling the letters over on her tongue. "That sounds nice."

Santana's heart squeezes in her chest. "It does."

Once Brittany and Santana reach the chuck, Brittany ducks inside to procure a bar of tallow soap. She wets her hands in the washtub, making suds on her palms and scrubbing over her skin, and then holds out her hands so that Santana can pour a cupful of water over them above the grass, rinsing all the uncleanness away. Though neither she nor Santana speaks much as they work, Brittany wears her quiet, excited grin all the while, alight in the glow of her happy secret.

By the time the girls get back to the mess proper, Ma Jones has already rung the lunch bell and company members have begun to heed her summons, pouring in from the four corners of the camp in various states of costume and all clamoring for food.

Smoke hangs in the air around the hearth, white against the day brightness and sharp with pine resin. The kitchen smells of savory spice and summer heat. Though Santana waits for Puck to arrive, as far as she can see, he never does. His friends show up all together, laughing and punching at each other with that violent, masculine affection that Santana will never understand, but none of them mentions anything concerning Puck's absence.

"Is something wrong?" Brittany asks, watching Santana as she watches the boys.

Santana shrugs, not sure how to answer.

(She isn't sure if it's worse to see Puck or not to see him, really.)

By the time Brittany and Santana get their lunches, newcomers have taken over their places at the table, so the girls end up sitting on the ground, leaned up against the poles that support the blue awning. Sam, Finn, Kurt, Rory, David, and Blaine lunch just a few feet away from them.

The company has hardly even begun the meal when it happens.

Santana doesn't notice it right away—she's too busy passing Brittany their shared fork to pay much mind to anything else—but then she sees the boys sitting up on their knees, alerted like guard dogs to some disturbance on the edge of a property. Both Santana and Brittany look in the same direction as the boys, turning their attention to the heart of the mess, just beside the hearth. They kneel to see over the hubbub.

Ma Jones stands beside the fire, one hand drawn up to her mouth and the other hand pressed lightly to her belly against her apron. She seems as if she's just had a fright, like she spotted a snake in the grass or someone sneaked up on her from behind for once. Shane, the hulking supe with the pencil-thin mustache, crouches in front of her.

At first, Santana wonders if Ma Jones didn't drop something and if Shane didn't stoop to retrieve it for her like a gentleman, but then she scans for the dropped something in the dirt and can't seem to find it anywhere.

Just then, Shane reaches into the pocket of his dusty bib overalls.

Santana's heart realizes what's happening well before her mind does. It clenches in her chest.

_Oh dear God._

"... and, of course, you know that I always been partial to you, Miz Jones," Shane is saying, "so I asked Mr. Adams if he thought you be fit to looking for a husband. And he said he don't know it, only I best ask you of it myself. So I asked him if I was to ask you, would he give me his permission for it, since you don't have no daddy to say nothing for you otherwise. He said I could have his blessing if I had enough money to keep a wife, so I showed him this ring I done bought you, and he say it was a fine one."

Here, Shane produces the ring from his pocket and holds it up for Ma Jones to inspect.

It's small and plain, probably more tin than silver. Though it bears no stone, it's still impressive, considering that Shane bought it on a circus salary—and particularly without him being on the lists. He must have saved for a very long time to be able to afford it.

He continues.

"After that, Mr. Adams told me that if I was to ask you and if you was to accept my proposal, he would let you to me plain and put down two whole dollars towards our wedding because he feels so kindly disposed to you, and he wants to wish us well. So, Miz Jones, I know that I ain't quick or nothing and that a handsome miss like yourself don't have no reason to want for no husband, being as young as we are and you having such work to do as you have now, but I promise to do right by you. I'll marry you by the book, Miz Jones, and Mr. Adams said he can assent to that. He said he'd pay that two dollars to the preacher who gonna marry his Mr. Arthur to Miss Lucy this Saturday next, so as we can have a proper wedding that night, if you want it. Oh, please, Miz Jones, won't you say something?"

For the whole time Shane talks, no one else speaks a word. Once Shane finishes his speech, both he and everyone else in the entire mess pit stares up at Ma Jones, eager to know how she'll answer him—and one person more desperately than all the rest.

Sam Evans looks like a man who just took a gunshot.

All hope for himself has vanished from his eyes, and he wears a stark and awful sort of pain written over his face. His mouth hangs slightly open, and all of the ruddy brightness that tinged his countenance before lunchtime is gone.

He doesn't breathe and doesn't blink.

Ma Jones still hasn't said a word in reply to Shane's proposal. Instead, her gaze goes straight to Sam, knowing exactly where to find him amidst a crowd of hundreds. Everything seems to happen as slowly as honey pouring from a jar.

"Miz Jones?" Shane repeats again.

For once, Ma Jones seems at a loss for words and not at all like a war marshal or the Lady Justice or an archangel or any such proud and unconquerable thing.

Instead, she just looks very small and very young and absolutely heartbroken.

"I—," she falters, "I—I suppose—"

Ma forces herself to look back to Shane. She shakes her head, clearing out cobwebs and any recklessness that possesses her. Rules are rules are rules after all, and even the mighty Ma Jones can't escape them. A great weight settles over Ma, and her shoulders slump as if all the breath had just gone out from her.

"Of course, I will, Mr. Tinsley," she whispers.

(Has any person standing free under the open air ever looked as entirely trapped as she does?)

* * *

><p>Santana forgets herself, watching everything happen, until it slips out.<p>

"Oh no."

At first, Santana thinks that she's said the words herself, but then she realizes that it's Brittany whispering at her side. She looks over and finds Brittany's brow furrowed and her hands wrung together tight. A sharp, hard pang runs through Santana, like sensation suddenly returning to a limb after it had numbed from cold.

She's never felt as sorry for anyone as she does for Sam Evans and Ma Jones, she doesn't think.

If Brittany were to marry one of the circus boys—and really marry him, not just for show or as part of some agreement, like Santana's agreement with Puck—Santana doesn't know what she would do. Even just considering such a thing causes Santana's heart to feel as raw as if someone had scraped it along stone or with a knife.

Vaguely, it occurs to Santana that she's only known Brittany for less than two weeks, whereas Sam and Ma Jones have known each other since they were children.

A lump forms in her throat.

(In such a world where two people can have the thing they want most together—in secret—torn away from them in an instant, Santana vows to keep close to Brittany forever and ever, no matter what.)

Just when Santana thinks that she might start to cry, Brittany's hand finds hers in the grass. Brittany's eyes look wet, too.

By now, Shane has slipped his ring onto Ma Jones' finger and stood up from the ground to embrace her. The circus company claps for the new engagement but otherwise offers only the most subdued celebration, by circus standards. No one says anything directly to either Shane or Ma.

Except.

Sam starts to rise from his place on the grass. He wears a steely expression, like he can see something coming from a great distance away and he plans to meet it, whatever it is.

Santana's heart speeds in her chest. What is Sam doing? There are rules, after all. She can imagine that he might walk away—to go off somewhere to have some time to himself—for that's what she might do if she were in his place, but she can also imagine that he might say something unallowable in anger or in hurt or in plain desperation, as well. Santana glances at Brittany, who mirrors her concern.

Sam doesn't do anything like what Santana imagined from him, though.

His hands form fists at his sides. He squares his shoulders and doffs his hat. At first, he doesn't have everyone's attention and a low current of babble persists throughout the mess, but then he clears his throat loudly as if he intended to make a speech, and everyone looks to him with curious eyes.

When Sam speaks, his voice sounds choked but even.

"Congratulations to the happy couple," he says, nodding stiffly.

After his, other voices chime in.

"Congratulations!"

"Best wishes!"

"Mazel tov."

"How wonderful!"

Sam sets his hat back on his head, tugging the brim down to shade his eyes. He takes a few steps away from the other boys before sitting down again on the grass, pulling his knees up near his chest and crossing his arms over them, holding himself in tight.

Though his expression is stony and his eyes gleam, he sheds no tears. He closes his eyes for a long while, mastering himself, breathing slow, deep breaths through his nose, and looks almost seasick, like something has tossed him about to and fro or like someone punched him hard in the gut.

No one says aught to him or pays him much mind amidst the commotion, though.

(Not for the first time, Santana hates that so many important things at the circus have to remain secret—that the most important things at the circus have to remain secret, actually.)

Two weeks ago, if someone had asked Santana if she had anyone in the world for whom she felt heartbroken, she would have said herself on account of her own misfortunes, for she was orphaned and alone in the Tenderloin district and without a friend in the world, except for Puck, who was hardly even a true friend to her at all.

One week ago, if someone had asked her the same question, she would have said Brittany because Brittany's father had boxed her ear and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Yesterday, she would have said Quinn Fabray because Quinn has to marry Arthur Adams when all she really wants to do is write a story.

Today, it's Sam for more reasons than Santana can count.

Santana wishes desperately that she could do something for Sam, for he has such a face that seeing him sad is all but intolerable to anyone with a heart. Santana looks to Brittany, wondering.

_What should we do?_

Brittany seems to share a mind with Santana, for she gestures to Santana to abandon their plates and follow her over to where Sam sits. They move quietly and quickly over the grass and flank Sam on either side, with Santana crouching down behind his left shoulder and Brittany mirroring her at the right. Sam only hears them when they're close enough to touch him. Brittany sets a hand on his back. Santana hasn't any idea what to say to Sam, so it pleases her when Brittany speaks.

"Sammy," Brittany says, voice small and gentle, "are you finished with your plate? Santana and I can take it to the washtubs for you, if you like."

"What?" Sam says, dazed. Then, "Oh, sure. Thanks, Britt."

He sounds dull and only half present, though Santana doesn't blame him for it. She would be somewhere far away, too, if she were him, she supposes.

Brittany's expression tightens. She curls around Sam, catlike, and sits down on the grass beside him, smoothing out her skirt. She rests her head on Sam's shoulder. Santana follows her lead, taking a seat at Sam's other side so that he sits sandwiched between them, though she remains upright and worries her hands in her lap, unable to touch Sam like Brittany does.

(Rules.)

Both she and Brittany stare at Sam, long and deep and hard.

After a moment, Brittany says, "Santana and I were going to go to the horseracing track in town after the matinee—er, at least we were going to if I had asked Santana if she wanted to go and if she'd said yes. Puck says it's a fine place, and I've never seen it before. Would you like to go with us if I ask Santana and she says yes? Wait, hold on a second and let me ask her." Brittany leans around Sam to face Santana. "Would you like to go see the horseracing track with me after the matinee, darlin'?"

If Santana didn't still feel so sad for Sam and Ma, she would smile—and widely. Instead, she only nods. "I'd love to go to the horseracing track with you after the matinee, BrittBritt," she says.

Brittany's eyes turn fond. "That's swell of you," she says, turning back to Sam. "All right, Sammy, Santana says she'd love to go to the horseracing track with me after the matinee. Would you like to go, too?" Then, again, "Oh, wait, hold on a second. I forgot to tell Santana that you might go to the horseracing track with us, too. Be right back." She leans around Sam again. "Hey, Santana? I forgot to tell you that Sam might go to the horseracing track with us, too. Would it be all right with you if he did?"

This time, Santana can't help but smile—and neither can Sam, if only briefly and with sadness still deep in his eyes. They both chuckle at Brittany's silly talk but then quickly resume straight faces.

"Of course it would be all right with me, BrittBritt," Santana says. "Sam is a pretty decent fellow, and I'd be grateful to have his company."

"May I tell him that you said so?" Brittany asks, turning wilier by the minute.

"You may."

Brittany turns back to Sam. "Santana says that of course it would be all right with her if you went along with us to the horseracing track, Sammy. She also said that you're a pretty decent fellow and that she'd be grateful to have your company and that she wouldn't mind it if I told you that she said so, which is why I did."

Sam chuckles again, though his face remains sad. He shakes his head and looks at the grass before meeting Brittany's eyes again. "Did she really say that?" he asks.

"Yup," Brittany says. "So would you like to go to the horseracing track with Santana and me after the matinee, Sammy? Maybe we can see some stallions. Racing horses are probably different from circus horses, I think."

Sam chuckles again. "They probably are, Britt. And I'd like to go with you and Santana to the horseracing track after the matinee."

Brittany's face lights up. "So will you?"

"I will."

Brittany beams at Sam. "Good man, Sammy," she says. "Wait just a second more—I've got to tell Santana that you're going along with us to the horseracing track after the matinee." She leans around Sam, wearing a cat grin. "Santana, Sammy said he'd come along with us to the horseracing track after that matinee."

"Tell him that's dandy," Santana says, smiling back.

Brittany's face turns blank in an instant. "Santana," she says, feigning seriousness. "He's sitting right next to you. Don't you think you ought to tell him yourself?"

Santana laughs, in love with the most ridiculous girl in the world. "That's dandy, Sam," she says obediently, and everyone chuckles, gladdened by Brittany's nonsense game.

For the briefest instant, Santana forgets everything except for the simple pleasure of sitting side by side with her true love and the kindest boy she's ever met, laughing with them over a bit of nonsense. The sun warms her skin, and the grass feels fervent hot beneath her legs. She catches Brittany's eyes and then Sam's, finding light in them like the light in her. It's easy to believe that the world isn't altogether an awful place.

But only for the briefest instant.

All at once, Sam's smile goes out like light from a snuffed candle. His shoulders tighten, and the summer in him fades. He suddenly seems like a little boy lost somewhere. He shuts his mouth, settling into sadness like the countryside into winter.

Brittany and Santana's smiles disappear along with his.

"We're really sorry, Sammy," Brittany whispers, setting her hand on his arm.

It's as much as she can say, considering the rules.

Sam doesn't reply to Brittany—he can't, maybe. He swallows, nods, and tugs his hat down further on his brow. "I'll see you at the matinee," he says thickly, rousting himself from his place on the ground and heading away from the mess pit without looking back over his shoulder when he goes.

(According to the rules, Sam Evans ought to have whatever he wants.)

(According to the rules, Sam Evans can't have the one thing he wants at all.)

When Brittany and Santana turn to each other, Brittany's face is drawn and worried, and Santana knows hers looks the same. During Santana's first week at the circus, Sam was the boy who couldn't keep from smiling. Now he seems like he can't remember how to smile at all.

At the same instant, Brittany and Santana reach for each other, their hands twining upon the grass. They hold to each other's fingers so tightly that Santana can feel Brittany's pulse in her own skin. They don't have to speak a word to each other to know.

(In such a world where two people can have the thing they want most together—in secret—torn away from them in an instant, Brittany and Santana have vowed to keep close to each other forever and ever, no matter what.)

* * *

><p>It's strange, Santana thinks, how the world can keep on moving at its same mad pace even after two good people have had their hearts broken in it. It seems to her that things should pause, or should change even, but they don't.<p>

The company finishes its lunch, the kitchen girls resort to their washtubs, the warning bell tolls for the morning fair—was Ma Jones the one to toll it, Santana wonders?—the circus prepares for its upcoming show, and, having nothing else to do, Brittany and Santana retrieve both their own dishes and Sam's from the grass and take them away from the mess, hanging close to each other as they go.

When they reach the washtubs at the back of the chuck, the girls find Ma Jones' kitchen staff gossiping with some of Ken's supes, the lot of them whispering with such sibilance that they almost spit for it, leaned in close with their heads pushed together and all but ignoring the other circus folk who arrive to bus dirty plates.

It occurs to Santana that, at present, the kitchen staff giggles far less than they usually would; their conversation with the supes seems decidedly businesslike and even perhaps somber.

Hushed.

Not wanting to impose, Brittany and Santana dump their leftovers and Sam's into the slop bucket and hand the dishes over to the staff without speaking a word to the girls.

They don't manage to quit the mess area before they hear it, though.

Loud voices ring out down the narrow alleyway leading away from the chuck. The voices come from the business tent.

Brittany stills in an instant, and Ma's kitchen girls quit their whispering. Even the supes pause, dirtied plates still in hand. The recess behind the chuck falls silent. Santana realizes all at once both who speaks and about what.

"—but did you really think I would overlook the absence of such an important account? It's Incidental Expenditure, Jonah! I can't and I won't sign a damned thing until both I and my attorneys have seen the figures! I won't have you trying to swindle me—!"

"I didn't and I wouldn't dare! The absence of the account was an oversight on my part and nothing more, Russell, I assure you! I intend to make you a full partner. It wouldn't very well behoove me to withhold any portion of our spending from you, and especially not such a significant portion as that one!"

Santana can only imagine that Messrs. Adams and Fabray would feel very embarrassed to know how their voices carry down the corridor. They most certainly don't want an audience, and especially not one comprised of so many of their inferiors. Even in their anger, they don't mean to broadcast their conversation to supes and kitchen girls and Santana and Brittany—and yet that's exactly what they do.

"Then either you're a fool or your accountant is, sir! How much is it worth? Thirty-three percent? Thirty-six? You refunded every damn ticket in Storm Lake—!"

"—an usual occurrence if there ever was one! Now listen, I assure you that even taking Storm Lake's losses into account, this business is a profitable one, and it will be even more so once we no longer have to make payments to multiple railroads and can travel only along your lines and with your discounts! Even if you think poorly of my bookkeeping, Russell, please don't doubt my intentions! I'll remind you that my Arthur's future rests on this deal as much as your Lucy's does! We're going to be family! Family! Think of the wedding!"

"I require the account by tomorrow evening at sundown! No later. And I want it notarized."

"But, Russell, you can't expect—"

A new voice enters the conversation, cutting into what Mr. Adams has to say. This voice is young, female, and familiar—Quinn's.

"Please, Daddy! Be reasonable! Even if Mr. Adams were to send for the account by telegraph, they wouldn't be able to get the figures here by tomorrow evening. We're on the frontier, after all. I'm sure it was just an oversight that the figures weren't part of the original report, like Mr. Adams said. He's treated us so nicely since we've been here, Daddy, and everything else seems to be in order."

Mr. Fabray says something else, but Santana can't hear what it is exactly. A quiet settles over everything, both in the direction of the business tent and behind the chuck wagon. Santana spares a glance at Brittany, who frowns and worries her bottom lip between her teeth. The kitchen girls and supes seem similarly concerned.

Finally, Mr. Fabray speaks again. "Very well," he says. "But I will require the figures before I sign anything, including a marriage certificate."

Mr. Adams says something in response to Mr. Fabray, and Quinn laughs her false, airy laugh, prompting the men to join in with her. The voices become increasingly difficult to hear as their party seemingly moves farther away from the direction of the chuck, until finally the talk fades out both altogether and all at once. Maybe someone closed the flap to the business tent.

Though it seems that Messrs. Adams and Fabray have reached an accord for the time being, Mr. Fabray doesn't act as if he trusts Mr. Adams very well at all for it—a notion which causes Santana no small amount of internal distress to consider.

On the one hand, it worries Santana to think that Mr. Fabray might decide against investing in the circus, and particularly since Mr. Adams has yet to fill his outstanding debts to the company for their missing paychecks. On the other hand, Santana can't help but think of Quinn and how it would be best for her if she didn't have to marry Arthur Adams in the end.

A feeling of foreboding settles low into Santana's gut.

Ever since what happened in her own case at the bachelor cottage, she's learned to distrust attorneys and their work, for it seems that the whole legal system a way of stripping everything from a person, even when that person has done nothing wrong.

Of course, Santana knows very little about business or money herself, but it seems to her that if only Mr. Fabray realized how very many people were counting on him to buy the circus, he might be more willing to make the deal.

It would only be Christian of him, after all.

Santana hasn't learned enough concerning Mr. Adams' personal character to say whether Mr. Adams is a good or a bad man, but she has learned enough concerning the circus folk to say that, whatever their rough edges, they're as good of folks as any and that they don't deserve to have trouble come by them just because two stubborn persons can't seem to reach an agreement concerning their whole livelihoods.

"Shucks," Brittany says, breathless.

Though Santana has a mind not to speak concerning what she and Brittany overheard to anyone except for maybe Brittany when they're in private together, Ma Jones' kitchen girls don't seem to share her discretion. By the time the voices fade from the air, the kitchen girls have already begun gossiping again and calling for their friends to come behind the chuck to hear the news. The supes don't behave themselves much better.

Santana has no doubt that the entire circus will know about Mr. Adams' business with Mr. Fabray before the show bell rings for the matinee.

(Sometimes secrets are secrets for a reason.)

* * *

><p>Santana and Brittany leave the mess area with linked pinky fingers. They walk together through the cool-dark shadows along the family tent row, avoiding the open sun as if it were a disreputable stranger who meant to do harm to them. They speak nary a word aloud, though Santana doesn't doubt that both of them have a preponderance of thoughts which weigh upon their minds.<p>

Brittany watches her and Santana's outlines stretching long and tall near their feet and merging with the tent shapes and the lighter spots of shade cast under the wispy clouds in the sky. She watches the trees in the distance and the horizon and everything but what's directly in front of her.

Santana watches Brittany, following her lead.

When the girls stop outside of Brittany's tent, Santana takes Brittany's left hand in both of her own, petting over Brittany's thread ring. "Can you tell me your secret now?" she asks.

Brittany considers Santana for a long while, searching Santana's eyes as one would a crowded room for one person in particular—like Mr. Perrault's prince scanning for Cinderella at the ball. After a minute, Brittany shakes her head.

"Not yet," she says, giving Santana's hand a squeeze, "but soon."

It's a promise, Santana knows.

She trusts Brittany to keep it.

"Soon," Santana repeats, drawing Brittany's hand up to her mouth and kissing over Brittany's knuckles so delicately that she can feel the creases in Brittany's skin upon her lips. She closes her eyes just for a second and makes a wish.

When she opens her eyes, she finds Brittany staring at her, queer and reverent. "Just put it all in the show, darlin'," Brittany says.

"Brittany—?" Santana starts, but Brittany answers the question before she can ask it.

"Daddy did his best throwing at the first show we put on after Mama died," she whispers. "He hasn't ever thrown as well since, but that night, he did really good. Even Mr. Adams said he did."

Concerning her own mother's passing, Santana feels next to nothing except for the most inchoate sort of wishing that it hadn't happened. The truth is that Santana never knew the woman and never wanted for a parent beyond Papa or Abuela growing up. Even so, it doesn't strain Santana's imagination to consider how things must have been different for Brittany, losing a mother she loved and depended upon, and especially at such a place as the circus, where everyone sees sadness, but no one will speak about it.

Santana wants to say a million things to Brittany but settles on one. "I'll bet he did really, really great, Britt."

For Santana's word, Brittany's sad smile turns into a glad one. Her cheeks and brow flush with warmth that Santana can feel as well as see. Instead of answering, Brittany stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to Santana's forehead. Her lips linger on Santana's skin, and Santana closes her eyes to the sensation, trying hard to memorize it.

"Thank you," Santana says.

Brittany doesn't move back from Santana before replying. She just mumbles something against Santana's skin, lips still printed to the same spot that she kissed.

"What was that?" Santana asks.

Brittany retracts, settling back down onto flat feet. "'You're welcome,'" she says, wearing her small, queer smile. She glances at Santana and then away, a strange twinge to her voice.

(What she mumbled didn't sound anything like "You're welcome" at all.)

Before Santana can ask Brittany to explain, Brittany gives Santana's hands another squeeze and then releases them, disappearing into her tent as quickly as if it were by fairy magic.

Somehow, Santana thinks she knows what Brittany tried to say even if she didn't catch Brittany saying it.

* * *

><p>After fetching her tablecloth and tambourine from her and Puck's tent, Santana scurries to the midway, checking the marquee outside her gazebo to make certain that it still has its last line blocked out—it does—before sliding into her seat just as the bell rings for the fair.<p>

Though Santana waits for Ken to arrive and assume his usual post on the pitch, he never does. She wonders if he isn't busy sending a telegraph for Mr. Adams.

His absence both disconcerts and gladdens her.

Before Santana met Brittany, she had never much considered that something or someone could be two ways at once. According to her reckoning, a thing was either good or bad, whole or incomplete, available or not, clear or obscure, with no valence to it or give.

Now she knows better than to think so plainly, though, for in her own self, she has learned to feel many very different feelings all at once and often in extremity.

At the moment, she feels both anxious to know Brittany's secret and surprisingly—wonderfully—calm not knowing it, or at least with Brittany not saying it aloud. She also feels sad for Sam Evans and Ma Jones and worried about the circus and wary of Puck but grateful for and sweet on Brittany, too. She's both happy and sad, moored and adrift, at peace and in flux.

It would startle her to be so many opposite ways all at the same time, except that Brittany has taught her that it's all right just _to be_ sometimes.

And so Santana is.

Like she did yesterday, Santana can't help but daydream about Brittany as she starts to read palms. She tells a woman forced into her gazebo by two unruly teenage sons to mind the boys' mischief at the same time that she thinks of ways to sneak in more reading lessons for Brittany around their chores. She prophesies that a young collegiate man home for the summer ought to continually study his books during his holiday diversions if he wants to impress his professors upon his return to university while imagining what it will be like for her to go with Brittany to the horseracing track after the show.

She gives her third reading to an elderly businessman and pays no more mind to it than she did to the others—she's off somewhere, wondering if she and Brittany will have time to steal kisses together before their rendezvous with Sam—as she promises the man that his own prudence and forthrightness will be a credit to him throughout his career, and particularly if he seeks to settle all his debts in full before his imminent retirement.

It isn't until the very end of her reading that Santana starts to pay attention to what's happening, and only then because something unusual happens—namely, the old businessman thanks Santana very much for her work and slides something across the table toward her under his hand.

"For you, my dear."

"Sir?"

"Keep it for yourself and don't spend it all in one place, hm?"

"Sir?"

Only when the old businessman offers Santana a kindly smile does she take in his aspect for the very first time: he's withered like a raisin, with pale skin almost so white as to match his hair, itself alabaster. He sports a thick, yellowing mustache over pink lips and wears a handsome gray suit with sterling silver cufflinks and a pretty checkered cravat. He holds a black velvet hat in his lap. All in all, he's dressed very finely, like the antique version of Mr. Adams, though perhaps a bit less flamboyant.

Before Santana can say anything more to the man, he presses the _something_ into her palm and curls her fingers closed around it and his own fingers closed around hers. Though he only holds her hand for a second, Santana can't help but to notice how smooth and dry his fingertips are. His touch reminds her very much of Abuela's.

The _something_ feels body warmed, soft, and thin.

Paper.

Santana's eyes widen. She wants to ask the man what he means by giving her money, but she knows that it would be vulgar for her to do so.

The man stands up from the table.

"Thank you," Santana says, not sure what she can say otherwise.

The man smiles at her again and winks. He sets his hat atop his head. Without another word, he threads himself into the crowd, vanished amidst a forest of shoulders and chests and blocking bellies in an instant.

Right on cue, the show bell rings.

While the more part of the throng that surrounded Santana's booth begins to disperse, moseying off in the direction of the big top, some of the patrons who stood closest to Santana's table and watched the old man give Santana her tip linger to see if she'll perhaps reveal the bill in her hand to them.

They want to know its sum.

Whereas one week ago, Santana might have showed her patrons what it is they desire to see simply out of deference, today she refuses both to meet their eyes and to open her hand. Instead, she stares at her tablecloth, focusing in on the blue, green, fuchsia, and gold until her patrons realize that they had better hurry over to the big top to get a place in line if they want a good seat for the main show.

Santana waits until these last stragglers go to unfurl her hand.

The paper is a grayed white, older than the one-hundred dollar note that the late Mr. Hammond offered to Santana in St. James, but still in fine condition. It's folded into thirds and has pretty, ornate embellishments all along its borders. With curious fingers, Santana pulls at its corners, opening it like a gift.

When she sees the "5" she gasps.

_Five whole dollars?_

When she sees the "0" after the five, she suddenly can't breathe.

Brittany was rich when she had a nickel in Storm Lake. Now, Santana gapes at the bill she holds stretched out between her two hands. There must be some mistake.

_Fifty whole dollars._

Her first thought is that the note must be counterfeit—that the old man gave it to her as a joke or even to get her in trouble—but then her eyes find the red seal from the U.S. Department of Treasury imprinted on the left corner, the serial number, and the intricate illustrations of General Washington crossing the Delaware River and of the Ladies Justice and Liberty and Victory in league together and of a patriot soldier kneeling in the woods. The bill bears the date 1891, and it is as real as Santana is.

Never having had any money to her own name, Santana doesn't possess even the first idea as to what she ought to do with such an impressive sum.

Except for that she does.

The thought comes to her almost as quickly as the money did.

She could pay Puck back.

She could pay Puck back for all of his expenses on her account if she were to give the note to him—for the money he paid for her boarding in the Tenderloin district and for her train tickets to the West and for the inn in Omaha and for her meals and for her safety.

For everything.

Whatever pittance Puck seized from Santana last week at the dole can't even begin to cover her debt to him, but a fifty dollar bill would cover it all at once and more.

Santana pulls the bill taut between her thumbs, smoothing out its crinkles and examining its face. It seems like such a little thing, so weightless and silly, even. It isn't beautiful like fine artwork or as material as a book. Compared to Santana's grandmother's coins from Puerto Rico, it hardly even seems authoritative.

Funny to think that it could change so many things, then.

Everything, really.

"Little missus! Didn't you hear the show bell? Go on now! Clean out your booth!"

Ken has arrived to collect Santana for the matinee at last.

Santana crushes the note in her fist the instant she hears Ken's voice, hiding it away from him on impulse. Though Ken told her on her first day reading fortunes that she was welcome to keep seventy-percent of whatever tips patrons presented to her for herself, she somehow doesn't trust his word. Ken might confiscate the tip, or at least take thirty-percent of it for himself, never mind that he didn't even act as her talker on the bally today. Santana hates to think that she would have to relinquish even fifteen of the fifty dollars to Ken, let alone the entire sum. She wants to keep the note to herself—a secret—at least for a little while longer.

She wills herself to maintain an even face and looks up from her lap.

"Sorry, sir," she says, catching Ken's eye from where he stands outside her gazebo. She rises and gathers up her tablecloth and tambourine, keeping the money wadded against her palm as she works.

When Ken turns his back to her, Santana hesitates for just a moment, wondering where she ought to stash the bill during the show. She considers stowing it in her tablecloth but dislikes the idea of leaving such a valuable thing unattended under a bench somewhere when she goes inside the big top tent. After a second's more deliberation, she tucks the note into her corset between her own breast and the cloth, hiding it out of sight.

All at once, she feels adventuresome and rebellious, like how she imagines a heroine in a penny dreadful might be. Girls like her aren't supposed to have fifty dollar notes and they certainly aren't supposed to hide fifty dollar notes on their persons.

"You coming?" Ken grouses.

"Yes, sir," Santana says.

Only as Santana exits her gazebo does the thought occur to her: What if she decided to not give her money over to Puck just yet, or at least not all of it? She does owe him a debt, of course, but having money to her name also provides her with some security—with a certain sense of autonomy heretofore unknown to her.

As long as Santana retains her new wealth, she isn't entirely dependent on Puck.

(It's a very grand idea, having some freedom from him.)

Santana adjusts her corset, checking the feeling of the paper against her skin, before following Ken in the direction of the big top. She can always decide to remit the note to Puck later, of course. There's no harm in her keeping it for a few days, at least, though—no harm in that at all.

* * *

><p>Rachel Berry stands on tiptoe, hugging herself in close and peering over the backstage area. When she catches sight of Santana, she drops back down onto flat feet but doesn't really relax at all. Her eyes seem slightly crazed. Somehow, she reminds Santana of a clockwork toy wound up so tightly as to spring its cogs.<p>

"Have you seen Noah?" Rachel asks as soon as Santana gets to within speaking distance of her.

Her question is a sharp one.

Santana quirks an eyebrow. Yesterday, she and Brittany poked fun at Rachel on the train. Is Rachel snipping at her now on account of that incident or in response to all the bad news for the circus? In either case, Santana hasn't seen Puck—not since early on in the morning. She shakes her head.

"He's probably with the other boys, getting ready for the knight sketch."

Rachel huffs a sigh. "Well, he had better be," she says. "We mustn't make any mistakes today."

"No mistakes," Santana agrees, taking the opportunity to duck away from Rachel and over to Mrs. Schuester's girls to collect her veil and flower.

By the time Santana rejoins the queue at the back of the big top, Ken is already ushering the "maidens" inside the tent and Rachel has resumed not speaking to her. A weird nervousness hangs in the air, like everything happens just on the brink of something, close to an invisible edge that everyone knows about but that no one can see.

The strange charge follows the girls inside the big top and lingers throughout the show.

Somehow, it seems as if there are almost two circuses—the one, bright and gay, viewed through the eyes of the patrons, who know nothing about circus secrets and who only seek simple diversion; and the other, strange and furtive, petulant in the sidelong glances of the company, who know everything about everything but can't speak a word concerning it aloud, even amongst themselves.

Brittany and Santana dance together during the knight sketch, with Brittany spinning Santana in circles, causing her skirts to billow like laundry windblown on a line. The girls turn, beautiful and dizzy, wearing show smiles for the crowd, and the audience adores them, cheering raucously until the knights appear.

Despite Rachel's concern, Puck doesn't miss his cue. He performs crisply and well, as do all the other boys around him. Indeed, the whole company seems spot-on, well-practiced in their motions and with a certain sort of magnificent exaggeration to their playacting.

_Put it all in the show_, Brittany said.

(Everybody does.)

Of so many deft performances, the one that catches Santana's eye the most is Sam's.

After the knight sketch draws to its end, after the Flying Dragon Changs brave their precarious heights, after Will the Ringmaster resumes the stage to announce the Equestrienne Coterie, the clowns fumble out into the ring to steal his hat. Amongst them are augustes, fools, tramps, and harlequins, and one particular boy whose face finally for the first time matches its sad makeup.

Sam is brilliant and comic.

It's he who plucks the top hat from Will's head and then the cane from Will's hand. He jams Will's hat atop his own hat—a smart and dapper stovepipe over a rumpled, pathetic thing—stacking them up double and then apes like he's the ringmaster, directing this clown to go here and that clown to go there and even jogging over to the band to harass them about how they play their music.

With great prepossession, Sam directs the shaggy maestro to slow down the tempo of the band's march, turning it from a triumph to a funeral dirge. He coaches his fellows to move slowly and to change their smiles into frowns like his and then scolds the audience for laughing at him, shaking Will's cane to show them his seriousness, pretending that he prefers sadness to everything else there could be.

Santana can't help but laugh, too, seeing a sad clown conduct a sad circus.

"You ill-behaved derelict!" Will shouts, snatching his hat from Sam's head and then yanking the cane from his hand. "I'll hang you upon the flag pole upside-down!"

The audience roars with delight.

Though Sam seems glad for their applause, he never once cracks a smile.

Even once the clowns leave the stage, Santana can't help but remember him and how he looks. She feels a great rawness in her heart and thinks, without meaning to do it, about how Ma Jones fares back in the kitchen.

(She wonders, in a vague sort of way, who allows Ma Jones to rest when her heart breaks for Sam Evans?)

When the time comes for the gypsy act, Santana finds the strange twang of the band's song and knits herself to it, dancing from somewhere beyond herself. Puck circles about her, devil red in firelight, and even Rachel looks eerie and dangerous, most unlike herself, with the revolving blaze from her flail catching the sheen of her eyes and the shadowed places on her face. The song and the flames transform the three of them until they are as real gypsies, true revelers in fire.

Santana spins and spins until she almost can't think, the cheers of the crowd the only thing tethering her to the earth.

Though Santana frets throughout the knife throwing act, no harm comes to Brittany, and Mr. Pierce aims true.

In fact, the whole matinee goes well, with nary a mistake in it by either man or beast, much to the delight of the patrons, who offer up most generous applause for the final parade. The circus folk wave out goodbyes until the last of the music, until they get outside the big top, until there is no more stage beneath them, until they've stepped outside the show, and they've nothing left to do for it—until everything is done.

* * *

><p>Only outside the wonderland of the big top does Santana stop to question her own plans for the remainder of the afternoon. As a first thing, she doesn't know where to meet up with Brittany and Sam for their outing to the racetrack. As a second, she realizes that the three of them probably don't have permission to leave camp. As a third, she worries that Puck might object to her running off—and especially in the company of Sam Evans.<p>

She frets as she hands her tablecloth and tambourine over to Puck, worrying her hands together and watching him with shifting eyes. She fully expects Puck to try to take her back to the white city with him and holds her breath, waiting for his word.

"Thanks, ladybird," he grunts, stuffing her things in amongst his own. He shoulders his satchel and looks off beyond the white city, scanning the horizon. After a second of thought, he shakes his head, clearing cobwebs. "I'll see you later," he says.

Though his inattention surprises her, Santana doesn't stop Puck when he goes. Instead, she loiters at the back of the big top, hanging out in the backstage until she's almost the last person left in it.

Almost.

"What are you playing at?" Ken growls, noticing her as she skulks beside the benches.

"Nothing, sir," Santana says quickly.

Ken's eyes narrow. "Well, how's about you go do something for once, huh?" he says, shooing her in the direction of the dressing tents. He acts almost pleased to have caught Santana stepping out of line.

Santana waits until she has her back turned to Ken to roll her eyes. "Yes, sir," she says again, going right along. It seems to her that even on days when she has little to do with Ken, she can't help but get on his bad side.

* * *

><p>As it turns out, waiting for Brittany and Sam at the dressing tents proves much more profitable to Santana than waiting for them at the big top did.<p>

Within minutes, Sam exits the men's tent, his face scrubbed mostly clean of its paint, except for a few smudges of boot blacking about his mouth and chin and some smears of black and blue and rosy pink powder paint along his shirt collar, stained in by his sweat. He greets Santana with a dull wave.

"Are we still on for—?"

"—I think so."

They both stare at each other, amiable but unsure as to what else to say in the absence of Brittany. Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets and shrugs his shoulders. Santana looks anywhere but at him, watching a cricket brave the grass around her ankles and then a bird dart from one copse of trees to another in the distance.

She wonders if she shouldn't feel guilty for spending time with Sam after Puck worried that she was sweet on him, but then she finds that she can't bother to care.

Sam Evans is harmless, and Santana Lopez is sweet on somebody else; if Noah Puckerman thinks anything different about it, he can go soak his head.

Really, if Puck were even half a real friend to Sam, he would know enough to pity the poor boy rather than to feel jealous of him anyhow.

Before she can think better of doing it, Santana says, "I never really thanked you for helping to take down my tent last week, Sam. It meant a lot to me that you would do a good turn on my account, even when I was all but a stranger to you."

Sam considers Santana for a moment, his hands still deep in his pockets. He still can't muster a smile, but his eyes are gentle. "You're welcome, Ms. Santana," he says quietly, never removing his gaze from her.

For the briefest instant, Sam looks as if he wants to go on, but he doesn't manage to do so before Brittany appears around the corner of the sideshow tent, changed from her show costume back into her tatty sundress.

"Hey, darlin'!" she says, sidling up beside Santana. "What's the good word? Has Sammy been keeping you company?"

While Santana knows that she probably oughtn't to smile too widely around Sam—no person who's sad with good cause wants to find himself surrounded by happy people—she simply can't help but do so and breaks into her most unencumbered Brittany-grin.

Luckily, Sam doesn't seem to mind.

"It's Santana who's been keeping me company," he says kindly.

Brittany gives Sam a stout nod, as if to tell him that she's glad to hear of it or maybe to tell him that she isn't surprised. "So are you ready to go see some racehorses?" she asks.

"Sure thing," Sam says.

Neither Brittany nor Sam mentions anything about asking permission from any person in authority to leave the camp, so Santana doesn't bring it up, either. Instead, she just goes along with them as they set out down the midway pitch in the direction of the main road. Brittany and Santana link pinky fingers, and Sam walks beside them, hands firmly in pockets. The girls take two steps to his every one. Though they all meet eyes from time to time, no one speaks aloud because there isn't need to do so.

Yellow wildflowers and sprigs of brushy, red weeds thrive along the roadside amidst the tall grass, and a breeze blows in from the west, though nothing as strong as the one in Ackley. Bugs and birds chirrup from the prairie. Everything seems clement, lively, and green.

The road to Independence twists and bends, following along what Santana assumes is a sizable river or lake just off in the distance. Though their little party passes by several riders on horseback and a single buggy, none of the traffic stops to trouble them, despite how strange they must look as two barefooted girls and a boy in clown shoes, all walking abreast down the road together.

After several minutes, they happen upon a small, wooden footbridge that passes over a creek, and Brittany peels away from Santana to peer over the rail into the water. She stands on tiptoe, hair hanging down around her face like the boughs of a weeping willow tree. Sunlight reflects upon her spun gold.

Santana doesn't notice herself staring at Brittany until Brittany catches her eye. A blush rises to Santana's cheeks. "It's a shame that Mr. Halberstadt isn't here," she says, trying to explain herself. Then, when Brittany quirks an eyebrow, "Someone should make a photograph of you, Britt, just the way you are now."

"Someone should make a photograph of the frogs," Brittany demurs, pointing over the bridge.

At her word, Santana and Sam join her in looking into the creek. Sure enough, they see several sleek, yellow leopard frogs, streamlined and stippled, slipping in and out of the water, darting along the weeds, and making circles where they submerge. Santana watches Brittany watch them, honed in on the way that Brittany's eyes follow this frog and that.

Amongst so many other things that she loves about Brittany, one of the things that Santana loves the best is that Brittany can find delight in hidden things that no one else would even notice.

Santana nudges Brittany with her elbow, and Brittany looks at her, eyes reverent and deep. Neither one of them speaks, but something passes between them like an electric current. Brittany's fingers smooth over Santana's arm on the rail, and Santana feels a thrill knowing that sometime later today—maybe after this adventure into town is done—Brittany will finally tell her her secret.

* * *

><p>After watching the frogs, Sam, Brittany, and Santana make quick time to Independence, which stands only a mile or so off from the white city in the end. Though Santana had worried that they might perchance encounter some difficulty in locating the horse racetrack, it turns out that their destination stands just a short distance from First Avenue and is plainly visible to any person coming into town along the main road, its pennant flags flying high above the street fronts.<p>

It looks like a fairytale castle, magnificent against sky blue.

As she and Santana and Sam draw closer to the racetrack, Brittany starts to bounce with the same candy shop excitement that Santana so adores in her, suddenly walking more on the balls of her feet than on the flats of them and squeezing Santana's finger with her own. Sam regards Brittany with a tenderhearted, knowing look. Santana all but melts because of her.

"Are you ready to see some racehorses, Britt?" Sam asks.

Brittany nods. "Do you think they can run faster than our zebras?"

It's a funny question and one that neither Santana nor Sam has considered before, Santana knows. Sam shrugs. "Maybe," he guesses.

He looks like he wants to smile, but can't.

Brittany considers his answer for a moment, chewing her lip and thinking on the matter, and then says, quite seriously, "I'll bet you my dinner biscuit that they can't."

Now Sam does smile, if only for a second. "You're on, Miss Pierce," he says, extending her his hand so that they can shake on their stakes.

(The fact that Brittany can hold onto Santana with her left hand and shake on her and Sam's wager with her right somehow both pleases and delights Santana probably more than it ought to.)

(She likes that she and Brittany fit together and so very well, too.)

After making his bet with Brittany, Sam seems to perk up a bit. Though he still isn't happy, he is game for an adventure. He leads the way from First Avenue to its adjacent Twelfth Street, whereupon he and the girls discover the track.

Seeing the place up close, Santana realizes that it is not unlike the inside of the big top in structure—comprising tall bleachers and poles with pennants atop them and a shorter grandstand, plus adjoining stables. The track bears what must be a very recent coat of brilliant whitewash. The sign above the grandstand reads RUSH PARK KITE TRACK.

Though no one stands in queue outside the grandstand, many people mill about the property, which is obviously a focal point of the surrounding blocks. Considering that no one outside their party seeks entrance to the track, Santana can only presume that there won't be a race today—probably on account of the circus coming to town, as she reckons it.

How, then, will Brittany and Sam ever settle their bet?

A man in a bowler hat and rolled shirtsleeves sits on a stool outside a gate of metal turnstiles leading into the track proper, his feet propped up on a bucket. He reads a newspaper and smokes a handsome brown Peterson pipe. When he sees Brittany, Sam, and Santana approaching him, he sets down his things on the small table at his side and ambles to his feet.

With a wily grin, Brittany gestures for Santana and Sam to follow her over to the man, who seems to be the gatekeeper into the park.

Before they can as much as greet him, the man at the gate stops their trio from going any farther, putting out an arm to bar their way. "Hold up," he says, gesturing to a sign hanging above the turnstiles. It reads NO PUBLIC ENTRANCE in large painted letters. "You need a ticket to see the track."

Sam's hand moves automatically to his pocket. "How much would three tickets cost?" he asks, reaching for his wallet.

The man casts a quick glance at Sam and Brittany, but then his eyes linger on Santana. He looks over her hair and skin, though not her face. His lip curls into a sneer. "More than you've got," he says smugly. He stands before the turnstiles, obstructing the way.

For a second, Sam seems confused—his face blanks and brow furrows—but then recognition dawns behind his eyes. He sets his jaw and straightens up, shoulders squaring. Though he's usually one of the gentlest circus boys, all of a sudden, he seems primed for a fight.

Santana stops him before he can start, not wanting him to get into trouble on her account.

"Sam," she says, "it's all right. We don't have to go inside."

Brittany chimes in. "It's all right, Sam."

It takes a full second before Sam unballs his fists at his side. He and the man meet eyes but don't speak to each other. The man still wears his awful sneer, and Sam still looks angrier than Santana has ever seen him. It all has very little to do with the racetrack, Santana knows.

Very slowly, Sam adjusts his hat and turns back toward Brittany and Santana, allowing them to lead him away. As they go, they hear the man laugh and resume his post at the turnstiles. Santana tries not to let it smart.

Rules are rules are rules, after all.

Sam starts muttering before he even gets out of earshot from the man. "Rotten gilly," he says, jamming his hands back into his pockets with force. "There are only two places where a dog like him belongs. One's the alley and the other's Hell, and the first place is too good for him—"

"Sam!" Brittany says, startled, Santana thinks, not so much by his coarse language as by the dangerous look on his face, so unlike his usual sunshine. She reaches for Sam's arm. "It's all right! It doesn't matter—"

"It does matter, Britt!" Sam says harshly, flinching away from Brittany's touch. When Brittany stiffens at his side, he immediately looks sorry for being short with her. His expression softens and his voice turns quieter. "It does matter, Britt," he repeats. "We all wanted to see the track and now some self-important gilly won't let us inside it, and all for no good reason. This was supposed to be an outing for us, but now it's ruined."

"It isn't ruined," Santana says quickly.

"No," Brittany agrees, though her voice wavers.

Sam doesn't dispute what small comfort the girls offer him, but he does resume his glum look from before. He extends his elbow to Brittany, and she latches onto it, Santana walking at Brittany's other side, all three of them in a row. Sam kicks at the gravel on the road with his oversized shoes, scuffing it along.

"You finally look like a sad clown today, Sammy," Brittany says quietly, and Sam nods, keeping his eyes downcast to the dirt.

(Santana knows, and she knows, and she knows: when one can't speak concerning what troubles one's heart, one feels pain all the keener for it.)

Just then, a billow of foul air carries by on the breeze and all three members of the little trio halt, making sour faces at the stench of it, covering their mouths and noses with their free hands. It's the unmistakable mephitic reek of warm horse manure—and lots of it.

Though Santana couldn't have imagined a stranger source of inspiration for herself than that, she suddenly finds that she has an idea.

"You don't need tickets to see stables," she says all at once.

Brittany's eyes light right away, but Sam doesn't catch Santana's suggestion.

"Beg pardon?" he asks.

Santana points in the direction of the stables on the far side of the racetrack. "So we can't get into the park," she says, "but I'm sure we can walk around the stables, if we like. We could talk to some grooms and ask about how fast racehorses are so that you and BrittBritt can settle your bet. We walked all this way, so we may as well try it."

Sam's glum look disperses. "Why, Ms. Santana, that's a fine idea," he says, wheeling around in a circle to face their party back toward the stables. "Shall we, ladies?"

And so they do, and so they do, and so they do.

* * *

><p>Truth be told, there is nothing especially glamorous about stables, and the ones at the racetrack scarcely differ from the ones at the circus, except for their permanence, in the first case, and their portability, in the second.<p>

Of course, the stables at the racetrack are impressive in their size and boast a vast population of handsome brown thoroughbreds. All the same, they do stink of horse body and waste grass and are so filthy on the inside that a person would do better not to consider how so.

Sam, Brittany, and Santana don't actually enter the stables themselves all the way; they only duck their heads through a door to see the internal goings on from a distance. Afterwards, they resort to exploring the paddocks outside the stables proper, watching as several young grooms put various horses through paces.

From their perches along the fence, the little trio has a very good view of the thoroughbreds, with their handsome, lean hocks and arrow chests and coats as shiny as new pennies. Brittany wears a delighted smile, and Sam looks strangely serene.

Having observed the horses for quite a few minutes, Brittany makes a concession: "They probably are faster than our zebras."

Sam looks up at her. "How do you figure?" he asks, curious considering that they have yet to see the horses run at any pace faster than a trot.

"Well, they've got longer legs than zebras do," Brittany points out, gesturing at the closest stallion, "and things with long legs can move much faster than things with short ones—that's why Methuselah can always beat me when I go along beside him, even when I run and he just walks."

Sam smirks. "Don't tell that to Stevie," he says, "or else he'll say that I cheat at our footraces."

Brittany gives Sam a serious look. "You can't help being tall, Sam," she says matter-of-factly. "It's just who you are."

(It's a simple thing to say—but, then again, not really.)

Their group falls silent for several more minutes until Sam muses, "Mr. Adams should rent out a zebra to the stables for an exhibition race against one of these stallions. Even if the zebra lost, it would still make good money for Mr. Adams, and everyone would have a fine time watching the race. Mr. Adams could charge whoever owns the stable a hundred dollars for use of the zebra, and then he could take Britt's tip about the zebra's stubby legs and bet against his own animal to make another hundred dollars off it."

Brittany breaks into a smile. "How very clever of you, Samuel," she says in her false proper accent.

Santana smiles, too, and mimics Brittany's speech. "A capital idea!"

Just then, one of the grooms leads his horse close to where their trio sits and overhears their conversation. He's a small, nervous-looking fellow with bright red hair and dull, almost swollen eyes. He glances up at Sam, expectant. "What's a capital idea?" he asks, interest piqued. "Do you have a tip on a horse?"

Though he speaks to Sam plainly, his words mumble together. He doesn't sound particularly intelligent to Santana's ear, though she supposes she oughtn't to judge, not knowing the boy beyond what he's just said.

Sam shakes his head, obviously taken aback that the groom would make note of him. "No tips," he says quickly. "We were just talking about how a racehorse would measure up to a zebra."

The groom nods as if the matter at hand is the usual sort of thing that one might consider when looking at a thoroughbred. "Did you go see that circus up by the Wapsipinicon earlier today?" he asks. "I hear they have zebras."

Though they probably oughtn't to do it, both Brittany and Santana giggle, amused that they've somehow managed to hide in plain sight without that being their intention. Did they ever see the circus! Sam chuckles, too, but then turns kind. "We actually come from that circus," he says, indicating his own clown shoes and Santana's gypsy costume.

"Wow!" says the groom, flabbergasted. He looks over their clothing and aspects with a new sense of wonder, as if they were transformed before his eyes simply for Sam's word. "I was going to go see the show this evening, since I've got a few cents to spare."

Sam nods. "Well, you really ought to do it," he says. "We've got zebras and some elephants."

Brittany chimes in. "The elephants are really swell."

"Shucks," the groom says. "I've never seen an elephant." Then, "Wanna pet a racehorse? Come here, Bourbon."

He leads his horse up to the fence by its rope. For as impressive as the horse looked from a few yards away, he seems even more so in close proximity. He stands taller than the top of Santana's head at his shoulder and has dark, expressive eyes that make him seem sage.

While Sam and Santana hang back, wary of the strange animal despite his handsomeness, Brittany doesn't hesitate to lean forward over the fence post and stroke up his long, bony nose, following the grain of his coat.

"Hey, Bourbon," she says, and Bourbon snuffles in response.

Santana's heart gives a tug in her breast, and she reaches for Bourbon, too, petting him in the same even way that Brittany does. "Hey, boy," she says, and Brittany flashes her a pleased smile. Santana's heart tugs again.

(Being with Brittany helps Santana feel brave in ways she might have never done otherwise.)

Sam allows the girls to make their introductions to Bourbon before he reaches over to give the horse a scratch behind the ears himself. Though Sam wears a pleasant expression all the while, there's something in his eyes almost like circus-loneliness, but not just. Santana thinks it might have something to do with missing someone or at least with wishing that someone were near.

Bourbon seems to sense Sam's sadness in his own animal way; he nuzzles against Sam's hand and sniffs at the cuffs of Sam's jacket. For his part, Sam appreciates the kindness.

"That's a good fella," he mumbles. "You're all right. You're all right."

* * *

><p>After bidding Bourbon farewell and reminding the groom to wave at them from the bleachers should he attend the evening circus, Brittany, Santana, and Sam head away from the racetrack and stables, turning back down First Avenue on their way out of town. Since it's not yet half past five o'clock according to Sam's pocket watch, they go rather slowly, in no hurry to return to camp, moseying along like sightseers on holiday.<p>

Brittany and Santana hold pinky fingers, and Sam walks just a little bit behind them, hands in his pockets, clown shoes scuffing along the dirt. Though Santana worries that Sam will perhaps wear a hole through the toe of his shoe, kicking the ground with every other step, she doesn't say aught to him about it—in the first place, because it isn't her business to tell such a person as Sam Evans what he ought and ought not to do, and, in the second place, because she's caught up in playing a game which requires some degree of concentration on her part.

"I see... the letter _I_ four times right there," Brittany says, pointing to the wall of a brick building whereupon the words LOWEST PRICE ONLY, BEST STOCKING IN FOOD, GOODS, & CLOTHING are painted in large, Roman letters.

"That's right," Santana says, smiling at Brittany's cleverness at the same time that she searches up and down the street for another letter to add to Brittany's quiz. "How about... _G_?"

"There were a few on that wall," Brittany says, wearing her cat-smile.

"No fair using the same words twice, Brittany Pierce!" Santana protests. "It's against the rules."

Brittany counters, "No fair making up rules on the spot, either, darlin'!" and reaches over to tickle Santana's side, putting an intolerably wonderful feeling into Santana's skin and belly.

Though other pedestrians occupy the street on either side of them, Santana still can't help but shriek and flinch away from Brittany's touch like a giddy schoolchild. She giggles and spins around Brittany's back, almost making a full about-face toward Sam.

It's then that she sees it.

"Oh, Britt," she says, "come look here!"

She gestures for Brittany to follow her as she jogs from the street to the promenade, leading Brittany to the window of a ladies' clothing shop. Though he seems confused by Santana's sudden change in direction, Sam follows along after her and Brittany, appearing behind them as they step up to the glass.

Santana points to the object that demanded her attention where it sits on display in the window: a white hat with a brim so broad that it swoops down like a cascade, too floppy to support its own weight. Bouffant pink feathers grow up like rhododendron blooms about the cap, and the purple hatband bears an ivory brooch emblazoned with the image of a racehorse paused mid-stride in his gallop going down a track.

The hat's label reads LADY'S DERBY BENGÈRE HAT: $9.

If someone were to look at Brittany from inside the shop through the window just then and see her reaction to the hat, that person would think that she were experiencing an angelic vision.

Her expression is absolutely reverent. "Wow," she whispers, pressing in close to the window.

"I'd buy it for you," Santana says conspiratorially, answering a question that Brittany hasn't asked. It thrills her just to speak the words, knowing that she could buy the hat, if Brittany really wanted it.

(She shifts and feels paper against her skin. She shifts again and sees Brittany and feels something else entirely.)

"Nine whole dollars for a hat?" Sam says, incredulous.

Santana starts at the sound of Sam's voice; somehow, she had forgotten he stood behind her, even though very few seconds have elapsed since they stepped onto the promenade together. When she glances at Sam over her shoulder, she finds him shaking his head.

"You could buy enough feed to give a real horse breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week with nine dollars," he says wryly.

Just then, Brittany pipes up.

"I found it," Brittany says brightly, and Santana turns back to see Brittany pointing at the hat's label through the windowpane. Brittany's finger moves between the _S_ in the first word and then the _B_ in the second. Brittany couldn't look more satisfied with herself if she were to have struck gold.

Santana grins, dimple-deep. It's a silly thing, Santana knows, but somehow it doesn't feel silly at all. Despite the terrible things that have happened both to and around her throughout the day, happiness wells up inside her as though it were water overfilling a cistern.

"Have you been looking for our initials all day, BrittBritt?" she asks, touching a hand to her heart.

"Maybe," Brittany says slyly, singsonging the word. She bumps her hip against Santana's at her side, nudging her. "They were on that wall sign, too, but I didn't say anything about those ones because I was too busy with _I_ and _G_."

"You learned all that in one day, Britt?" Sam asks, genuinely impressed. "Ms. Santana must be a very fine teacher."

Though what Sam says compliments the both of them, Brittany seems to hear it all for Santana and grins, looking upon Santana with such fondness and pride that Santana almost expects a kiss from her for it. Brittany reaches for Santana's hand to tangle their two pinky fingers together again. "Isn't she just grand that way, Samuel?" she says, putting on her false proper accent.

(What she says sounds just exactly like something else.)

Santana couldn't blush more if Brittany were to actually kiss her with Sam watching. "Britt!" she squeaks, covering up her face with her free hand.

Sam still wears gentleness in his eyes. "She's swell, Britt," he says approvingly. He wears a queer expression, like he just tasted a sweet thing upon his tongue after so many other things that were sour.

* * *

><p>The closer their trio draws to the circus camp, the more Sam seems to wilt. He walks like a man going to his own gallows, and Santana knows why; there isn't really much time left before the evening fair, and once the evening fair has ended, the evening show will begin, and then will come suppertime, when the whole company will gather at Ma Jones' mess pit, and Sam will have to see her again and then begin to see her in a new way altogether.<p>

(Santana felt a scraped-bone ache in her heart when she thought that Brittany didn't love her back. She can only imagine what she might have felt if she had known that Brittany were to wed some boy who couldn't love Brittany half as much as she.)

The girls flank Sam on either side, not wanting him to walk alone. They go along in silence, enveloped by the loudening whir of bug buzzes on either side of the road as the afternoon waxes long. Santana fidgets, not certain what to do with her hands without Brittany holding them. It surprises her very much when Sam begins to speak.

"I was thinking," he says as they come upon the footbridge, "that I could maybe—maybe leave the circus—only I wouldn't have anywhere to go, would I?"

His voice sounds very small and choked. He doesn't look at either Brittany or Santana when he talks but instead keeps his gaze trained to the bridge underfoot. He wears a grimace that he seems to want to pass off for a smile.

It's the closest he has come to discussing what happened at lunchtime aloud.

For a second, his words hang in the air, like the final note of bugled "Taps," sad, as dusk descends. His clown shoes rattle over the bridge's wooden boards, echoing upon the creek. The girls share a look around his person, their faces twin mirrors reflecting concern and surprise to each other. Santana wants very much to comfort Sam, but she doesn't know where or how to go about it.

(After all: wordplay and racetracks and biscuit bets are only worth so much to a boy who has a broken heart.)

It relieves Santana when Brittany answers Sam's question.

"There are other circuses, but they're not our circus, Sammy."

Brittany reaches out for Sam's arm like she did in town. This time, Sam doesn't flinch away from her but rather submits to her touch, docile, allowing her to link herself to him. He barks out a rough and mirthless laugh but doesn't make a reply to Brittany before Santana chimes in.

"They probably wouldn't hire you anyway," she says, following Brittany's lead. She dons her grandmother's accent, recalling the fortune she read for Sam on the train to Cherokee. "After all, no one wants a sad clown who always looks so happy, no?"

Her teasing earns another laugh from Sam, though this one is even more mirthless than the last. He reaches up with his free hand and tugs the brim of his hat further down over his eyes.

"I don't know if I'll have that problem anymore," he admits, and he would be joking, but. He swallows a lump and then goes on. "Somehow I thought that things would just always be the same, that nothing would ever change," he muses, looking off toward the horizon and then back at Brittany and Santana. His eyes settle on Brittany. "I guess things haven't been the same for a long while, though, have they?"

He seems to mean something about the whole circus, but Santana doesn't exactly know what that something would be. What she does know is that if there has ever been a sadder boy than Sam Evans anywhere in the world, she would hardly believe it. Her heart aches in her chest as if Sam's heartbreak had suddenly become her own.

"Oh, Sam," she coos, unable to stop herself before she, like Brittany, latches onto his other arm, linking herself to him, too.

She knows she oughtn't to do it, of course—oughtn't to touch him. After all, the rules say that she can't. If Sam had a mind to do so, he could have Ken chuck her clean out of the circus or even summon the police to take her away for overstepping such boundaries, she knows. People like him and people like her aren't supposed to become friends with each other, and what if they haven't, after all? What if Santana has only imagined it?

Her breath catches behind her lips, and she stiffens at Sam's side.

But then Sam sets his palm over her hand upon his arm, holding her to him.

His touch is warm and mild.

When Santana dares to look at Sam, she finds his face tight and eyes glossy. He bears no malice in his expression but rather a desperate sort of gratitude instead. He swallows, hard and doesn't speak a word.

Brittany buries her face in his jacket sleeve on his other side. "Oh, please, just don't join Barnum & Bailey's circus," she mumbles into the corduroy. "Blaine says that their clowns like to make little children cry and that Mr. Bailey would sell his mother if he thought he could make a buck off her." She nestles against Sam's shoulder.

Sam doesn't laugh because Brittany isn't joking. Instead, he sets his other hand on Brittany's hands, crossing his arms over himself as if in embrace to hold both Brittany and Santana at his sides. "I won't join Barnum & Bailey's, Britt," he says quietly.

He keeps hold of Brittany and Santana all the way down the road.

* * *

><p>Only when their trio reaches the border of the white city does Sam extricate himself from Brittany and Santana and start to walk ahead of them. Their party makes it just a few steps into camp before it meets an obstacle.<p>

"Hey, you lot! Where have you laze-abouts been? I had work for you, Evans! And you girls should have been in the kitchen! Supper won't cook itself!" Ken hollers, waddling towards them through the wagon bay.

After nearly two full weeks of annoying Ken by both everything she does and doesn't do, Santana doesn't mind his diatribe for her own sake, but she does wish that he wouldn't shout at Sam and Brittany, neither one of whom deserves his meanness—and especially not Sam, who already has a broken heart. She opens her mouth, fully prepared to take the blame for distracting her friends from their chores.

She doesn't get the chance to say anything before the warning bell rings for the show, though.

"Sorry, sir," Brittany says quickly, breezing by Ken toward the heart of the camp. "But we have to go get ready for the fair!"

They couldn't have had better timing if they had planned it that way.

* * *

><p>Santana makes a brief stop at her and Puck's tent to collect her things for the fair. While there, she hides her fifty dollar note deep inside her valise, tucking it in beside her "missing tarot cards" in the toe of her shoe.<p>

(If Puck only were savvy to about half of the things that Santana kept hidden from him, he would realize that he scarcely knows her at all.)

At her gazebo, Santana tries to give every patron good news, for it occurs to her that each one of them probably harbors some private heartbreak about which the world might never know. She promises love and fulfillment and happy returns. She repeats the advice to be kinder, more thoughtful, wise, and full of compassion, again and again in different words, feeling as if she's somehow talking to herself rather than to strangers.

When it comes time for the evening show, she gathers up her tablecloth, watching the light grow long upon the midway pitch, dusk somewhere just beyond the trees, waiting to make its debut. The same warm breeze that's carried through the countryside all day plays at her hair, lifting it from her shoulders, and she closes her eyes to it, just for a moment, making a wish.

She meets up with Brittany for the knight sketch, the both of them veiled in blue. As they dance at the center of the ring, Santana smiles, filled up with the same gladness that she can always feel for Brittany, even when all else is grim around them.

"What is it?" Brittany asks her, curious and wily as she sets Santana into a spin and pulls her in close again right afterwards.

It's a silly secret and one that Santana has told Brittany before, but.

"I love you," Santana whispers in Brittany's ear, her body curling into Brittany's, finding place against it.

When it comes time to give out favors to the boys, Santana wishes she could hand hers over to Sam, but she feels compelled to present it to Puck instead, for, after all, she did vow to treat him with kindness. He's watched her through the whole performance, smiling his idiot smile. His eyes are full of hopeful wanting.

(Santana has nothing to give him but wilted cupplant and a friendly smile.)

It's after the knight sketch that it happens.

Will the Ringmaster takes the stage, holding his hat in one hand and his cane in the other. The lights shine down upon him, and he squints, hard, drawing a hand up to his brow to shield his eyes from the brightness, as though it were somehow oppressive to him.

Odd.

For a second, he seems not to know where he is. He takes an ambling step forward, squinting at the audience, before straightening up just the slightest bit.

Even odder still.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, a funny slosh in his voice, as if he were water carried in a wobbly bucket. "Please kindly direct your attention to the coolies on swings, who don't speak a damn lick of English but can fly like clay pigeons and fall twice as hard!"

The audience reacts with equal parts gasps and laughs, and Santana balks from her place at the back of the big top. In all her ten days at the circus, Santana has never once heard Will deviate from his usual speeches unless it were to ad-lib after some mix up in the show, and particularly not to say such horrible things.

A part of the audience starts to boo Will, but he waves his hand at them, as dismissive as if they were gadflies. Though the stage lights have already shifted up to illuminate the trapeze, Will refuses to vacate the ring below, instead holding his ground and leaning on his cane for support.

"That son-of-a-gun is drunk," says a voice from behind Santana. She turns to see Puck come to investigate all the jeering from the big top. He steps up behind her shoulder and peeks through the aperture in the tent. "Well, I'll be."

"What should we do?" Santana frets, increasingly nervous as the audience all but ignores the Flying Dragon Changs in favor of hurling more abuse at Will.

"Get off the stage, moron!" someone shouts.

"You drunkard!" someone else heckles.

Puck shrugs. "Our jobs," he says simply. "Unless ol' Willy passes out cold, it's on with the show, same as usual, ladybird."

But it isn't usual at all.

Will remains in the ring throughout the entire trapeze act, and when the limelight switches back to him, he recoils from it, photophobic. He's supposed to introduce the Equestrienne Coterie and cue the clowns, but he doesn't seem to remember his duties. The audience boos again, loud and turning meaner by the second. Will squints, his eyes all but hidden beneath his brow.

Luckily, Santana and Puck aren't the only ones who've noticed Will's inebriation.

Without waiting for their cue, the clowns rush into the ring. Rather than turning cartwheels onto the stage and stirring up harmless mayhem, they charge Will en organized mass, with some of the younger clowns snatching Will's hat and cane away from him while the biggest clown—David—grabs Will up by the knees, and several other clowns help to lift Will clean off his feet. David slings Will over his shoulder like a gunnysack.

"Let me down, you cocksuckers!" Will bellows. "We've a show!"

Will starts to beat at David's back, but Mr. Evans grabs his fists, subduing him. Blaine does the same to Will's feet before Will can start to kick. The audience cheers for the clowns and their boldness, and especially when the troupe begins to hustle Will off stage and then out the back flaps of the tent.

"Well, I don't blame the poor bastard for drinking," Puck says at Santana's side. "If I were married to his missus, I'd probably be twice as drunk as he is now every goddamn night."

As it turns out, Puck well may be the only person at the circus to look upon Will's drunkenness with so much forgiveness.

The clowns wrestle Will into the backstage area, forcing him to sit down on one of the benches beside the fire while he continues to shout threats at them—"I'll fight every last one of you incandescent sons of bitches! I'll choke you out!"—and flail about. Only when Ken and some of the bigger supes, including Shane, Finn, and the fellow who harassed Santana on the train with David, surround Will on his every side does Will cease to throw punches and instead start to ask what's the meaning of all this.

In the meanwhile, Mr. Evans rushes back out to the ring. Through the tent flaps, Santana hears him launch into Will's speech, picking up as if he hadn't just had to collect a drunken man from the stage, abduct him to the outdoors, and then fill in as his understudy, all in one go.

"Our esteemed patrons, I present to you the Most Elite and Accomplished Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie of St. Petersburg!"

Though it relieves Santana to see that the show can survive even with Will otherwise indisposed, she feels a certain sense of dread in observing how the audience doesn't particularly seem pacified, even with Will offstage.

Earlier today, Mr. Adams promised Mr. Fabray that the total loss in Storm Lake was an unusual occurrence.

Mr. Adams.

The man himself arrives in the backstage at the exact instant that Santana remembers of him, as if she had somehow summoned him by her thoughts. He wears his scarlet suit and cuts a stunning figure against the setting sun. If he is a lion, then he has come here to stake his kingdom. He takes long, hard strides and balls his fists at his side. When he approaches, Ken turns to him, as excited and nervous as a little jackal that hopes to nibble up scraps left over by a bigger predator.

"We got him, sir," Ken reports, gesturing to Will on the bench as if Mr. Adams hadn't already seen him there. "He's here, sir!"

Mr. Adams ignores Ken altogether, pushing through the circle of cross-armed supes and clowns, stopping just in front of Will. Though he had been yelling just a minute ago, Will falls silent the instant he sees Mr. Adams, jaw slackening. His eyes blear and lose focus, like he can't quite recognize who Mr. Adams is or reckon why Mr. Adams has invaded his space.

"What're—?" he slurs, but Mr. Adams doesn't allow him to finish.

Mr. Adams yanks Will up by the lapels in a single motion, holding Will pinned between the bench and his own body. Mr. Adams moves roughly and furiously, taking Will entirely by surprise.

"What—?" Will stammers again, but Mr. Adams won't have it.

"You notorious sot!" Mr. Adams roars, giving Will a sound shake. "Have you any idea what you've just done? Have you any inkling of the damage you've caused, you miserable, addlebrained, inebriate cock-up?"

He whirls Will around as though they were dancing, letting go when he has Will facing the fire. The clowns and supes gathered about part just in time to avoid having Will land on them. All the ladies in the backstage area gasp, including Santana, and Puck whispers "Oh, shit!" taking a step back. Will hits the earth hard, his left shoulder driving into the dirt and head stopping just before the hearth.

"I'll have to give a full refund to every last patron!" Mr. Adams shouts. "They're already clamoring for it! We'll be lucky if the mayor and town council don't ban us from this stop permanently or press charges against you for profanity and public drunkenness! Russell Fabray will likely book the first train back to his mansion in the East! You couldn't have waited for two hours, could you, you worthless souse?"

"Jonah," Will mumbles, starting to peel himself up from the earth just as Mr. Adams takes a menacing step toward him. He holds up his hand, as if he expects Mr. Adams to kick him in his prone position. "Jonah, please!"

Mr. Adams towers over Will. "You won't perform tomorrow, and you'll forfeit all of your salary for the next month to make restitution for tonight's losses. If that doesn't sit well with you, you know where the train is. Maybe if they're feeling generous, the normal school will have you back again."

Will sits up to his knees. "But Theresa and I were counting on that money to—," he complains.

"And these people were counting on the money from tonight's show and from the success of my negotiations with Mr. Fabray!" Mr. Adams thunders, making a wide gesture to all the circus employees in the backstage area.

For the briefest instant, a look of pain crosses his face, and he seems as if all the hope has gone out of him. He spares a glance at the lot of his employees, at the clowns and the supes and the seamstresses—and even at Santana and Puck. He opens his mouth, as if to make an apology to them for what had happened, but no words come out.

He has no comfort to give them.

He offers a stricken look to Ken. "Man the ticket booth until we've paid back the last dollar in full. Take down any complaints from the public. If there are any of the better men of the city who have words to say to me, send them to the hotel. I'll be with Arthur," he says.

Ken nods. "Yes, sir," he gruffs.

Without another word, Mr. Adams departs from the backstage area, headed quickly and purposefully in the direction of the sideshow and dressing tents. He moves like a lion with blood on his paws, a flare of scarlet against the darkening night.

* * *

><p>The rest of the show takes place without incident. Mr. Evans continues his duties as impromptu ringmaster, repeating Will's lines just as well as if they were originally his own. No one falls. No one misses a cue. Every knife lands at its perfect place in the target. Everyone wears brilliant smiles, though not one of those smiles is genuine.<p>

In the end, Mr. Adams' pocketbook takes a hit to the price of $1850 after he dispenses refunds to every single member of the evening audience. It takes another hit to the price of $82 when the sheriff's department issues the circus a fine for public vulgarity on account of Will's coarse language.

With everything done, Ken comes away from the ticket booth bearing a stack of nearly fifty notations listing out written complaints from various citizens of Independence, including one from a very influential pastor who says that what happened during the show is "the grossest sin against God" that he has ever witnessed in all his born days.

After the show finishes and the midway clears of patrons, the company members still stand out on the grass, huddled in little groups around the big top as they wait to perhaps hear some more news on how their business fares. Santana waits with them, cloaked in night shadow, wondering in her ignorance how it is that a circus dies.

Is it all at once, with the tent flaps open one day and closed the next, or has this circus been dying all along, even since before Santana signed herself to its lists?

_("I guess things haven't been the same for a long while, though, have they?")_

Eventually, the mess bell rings for what must be a second or third time in the distance, and everyone seems to realize all at once that they're late to supper. Puck appears at Santana's side, seeming somehow more present than he's been all day, even when they talked before. He doesn't mention anything about what happened with Will, even to lament the refunds.

Instead, he adopts a very formal air. "Would you do me the honor of perhaps accompanying me to dinner, my lady?" he asks, bowing deeply to Santana before offering her his elbow.

For a brief instant, Santana wonders if Puck isn't making fun of her, but she detects nothing but earnestness when she looks into his eyes.

"Oh, um, of course," she stammers, somehow startled by Puck's polite new demeanor.

(She's never known him to have manners before.)

Puck seems pleased as Punch with Santana's answer. He grins and links her arm through his, gesturing in the direction of the white city. "This way, my lady," he says, starting to escort her off the pitch and toward the billboard partition.

Though Santana must admit that she finds Puck's new refinement not altogether disagreeable, she also can't seem to figure out the wherefore and why about it. Will this be a permanent change in Puck, she wonders, or is it only Puck's way of trying to make up for how he treated her last night in their tent—a good turn that will end almost as abruptly as it begins?

When they arrive at the mess pit, Puck leads Santana over to the table, pulling out the bench for her with another deep bow. "If you would like to take a seat, it would be my pleasure to bring you your meal, ladybird," he says, still perfectly genteel, though a devil smirk has begun to creep up at the corners of his mouth.

Santana flushes, flustered by all of the attention Puck pays to her. She flushes even more when she realizes that Brittany and Sam have appeared at the table just in time to witness Puck's genuflection before her. Embarrassment warms Santana from the insides out, and she looks desperately to Brittany, worried that Brittany might somehow get the wrong idea about everything.

Sam smirks at Puck from across the table and makes a point to meet his eyes before leaning down to pull out the bench opposite Santana's and offer it up to Brittany. He lowers his voice and puts on a perfect imitation of Puck's diction. "If you would like to take a seat, Miss Brittany, it would be the greatest honor of my life to bring you supper," he apes.

Brittany rolls her eyes and sets down on the bench. "Don't be rude, Samuel," she says shortly. Then, "Yes, you may bring me a plate, if you're nice about it."

Puck chuckles, amused that Brittany would scold Sam for lampooning him. He reaches across the table to clap Sam on the shoulder, jovial.

"Look at you two," he teases, "bickering like a married couple! You know, Sammy, seems like nearly everyone's gettin' hitched lately, what with me and ladybird in New York and Arthur and the Fabray girl and now that Negro supe and Ma Jones on Saturday next. You and Brittany ought to just make it all official, while we're at it. Mr. Adams might even let you borrow the preacher man once everybody else has had a turn with him. Brittany's got you wrapped around her finger, and we've all known you two were meant for each other since the start anyhow. Might as well get hoppin' on it so that we can all be old married folks together someday."

When Puck first started talking, Santana felt her heart sink hard like a heavy stone into a pond. The more he continues to talk, the worse she feels—flustered, on the one hand, for reasons she can't even explain, and worried, on the other, that Puck might well cause Sam pain with his careless words.

Sam doesn't want to marry Brittany, and everyone here but Puck knows it.

Brittany and Santana both cringe at once, concerned for Sam's feelings and for other things, and Santana glances over to Sam, wondering how he'll react to Puck's goading. She finds that he wears an even expression and seems strangely nonplussed about everything.

He smirks. "Not a chance, Puckerman," he says, calm and self-assured.

Puck screws up his face and glances at Brittany, as if checking her for some hidden defect he had never known about before. "Why the Sam Hill not?" he asks, confused as he can be. "You too scared to ask Old Man Pierce for her?"

Sam laughs and shakes his head, entertained by Puck's idea or at least by the silliness of it, given away to real mirth for maybe the first time since lunch. He wipes his mouth with his hand, feeling out his own smile as though he had forgotten the shape of it. It takes him several seconds to recover, but once he does so, he looks up, staring across the table—not at Puck, but at Santana.

He meets her gaze and holds it. When he does so, Santana's heartbeat speeds, though she doesn't know why. She asks herself again, not for the first time in the day, what Sam might be doing.

There are rules, after all.

When Sam speaks, he chooses his words very deliberately.

"Because Brittany could only ever marry someone she really loves," he says, as simple as if it's the truest thing he knows.

He doesn't wait for anyone to reply before he steps away from the table, gesturing for Puck to follow after him.

"Come on," he says. "Let's go get these ladies some food."

Puck heeds Sam's word, ducking away from Santana without another look back at her, apparently none the wiser for what Sam has said.

Santana's heart beats out a race beneath her bones. For as much as she doesn't dare to look at Brittany after what Sam said, she also can't seem to look anywhere else. She chances a peek across the table and finds Brittany doing the same thing back at her.

Brittany wears a brilliant blush over her cheeks and ears and nose.

All at once, it occurs to Santana that Brittany Pierce feels copper pennies and taut strings and so many wonderful ineffable somethings for Santana just the same as Santana feels them for her—and so much so that even Sam Evans can see it.

Though she had suspected that Brittany loves her since their ride to the Onawa train depot herself, Santana still feels strangely comforted thinking that someone else suspects that Brittany does, as well—and not just anyone, but Sam Evans, a boy who was swaddled with Brittany and who knows Brittany better than perhaps anyone else at the whole circus camp.

Santana's heart swells, full to bursting, in her chest, as if it were overstuffed and coming apart at its seams. Santana feels so, so sweet on Brittany and also grateful to her and for her and about her.

Why hasn't Santana properly kissed Brittany yet today? It's a crime or a sin or worse.

"What?" Brittany says, still bashful, even minutes after Sam's quip.

Santana wants to answer a million things, really, but instead she grins her Brittany-grin and shrugs. "You're just wonderful, is all," she says.

Brittany giggles, flustered. "Well, you're just not Hugo," she replies.

Santana would lean across the table and kiss Brittany right then, but she can't, as Puck and Sam return just at that moment, bearing four plates of food between them. For a second, Santana stiffens, unsure of how to act around Brittany now that Sam knows that she and Brittany are in love with each other.

Unlike Santana, Brittany doesn't miss a beat.

"Take my biscuit," she instructs Sam, moving it from her plate to his as he sits down beside her on the bench.

Puck pulls a sour face. "What did he do to deserve that?" he asks, jealous only because Sam got the biscuit and not actually because he wants the biscuit for himself.

Brittany wears a blank face. "He gave me a good tip about a zebra," she says, just so.

(If Puck only were savvy to about half of the things that were hidden from him at the circus, he would realize that he scarcely knows anything about anything at all.)

* * *

><p>Santana feels like she as she did as a child when she would wait for her grandmother's <em>pasteles<em> to come out of the oven at Christmastime—impatient with the giddiest sort of wanting. It seems to take forever for everyone to finish their meals, and especially when Puck and Sam go for seconds. Santana fidgets on the bench, needlessly rearranging her skirts and worrying her hands together.

"You have someplace to be, ladybird?" Puck teases, nudging her with his elbow.

_Yes._

"No."

All the while, Brittany watches Santana from across the table, staring at her with wide, curious eyes even as Puck jaws on and on to Sam about the inanest things. From time to time, Brittany fidgets herself, and Santana wonders if Brittany isn't just as excited to tell her secret as Santana is to finally hear it.

When at long last the boys finish their meal, Sam offers to take everyone's plates over to the washtubs and says that he's going to turn in early for the night. The girls help to stack all the dinnerware up in Sam's arms and wish him sweet dreams.

As soon as Sam goes away, Puck turns to Santana. "Ladybird?" he says, gesturing in the direction of their tent.

Santana hesitates. Though she's made an honest effort to submit to Puck as much as she can throughout the day, at present, she finds herself most disinclined to do so.

"Actually," she says, "could I maybe walk Brittany to her tent and then meet you back at ours? I just want to wish her goodnight."

Puck considers Santana's request. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asks.

Santana shakes her head. "No, you go ahead and get ready for bed. I won't be too long, I promise."

Her answer seems to satisfy Puck. "Sounds good to me 'cause I'm whupped," he says, standing up from the table. He stretches out his arms above his head and speaks through a raucous yawn. "It's been a long day."

"Goodnight," Santana tells him.

Puck smiles his idiot smile. "Goodnight," he says back.

As he starts to walk away from the mess, Santana's heartbeat picks up. It seems to take him a very long time to shuffle out of the mess pit, and his every step is almost agony for Santana, who just wants him to be gone so that she can lead Brittany off into the shadows and finally hear what promises to be the best not-a-secret secret there ever was.

Once Puck disappears into the darkness at last, Santana offers Brittany her elbow. "May I walk you home, BrittBritt?" she asks.

Brittany smiles. "You may," she says, accepting Santana's arm.

As they head off in the direction of the chuck wagon, Santana keeps her eyes peeled for Ma Jones, but sees Ma Jones nowhere. Usually, Ma is the first person into the mess pit and the last person out of it, but, of course, Santana supposes that this isn't a usual night.

Brittany and Santana go along in silence, crossing the firelight glow from the hearths before slipping into the shadow just beyond the wagon. Though the air cooled considerably with the setting of the sun, it's still a warm night, and balmy. They stroll along the family tent row, arm in arm, until they happen upon Brittany's tent.

Santana's heartbeat reaches sprint pace.

"Britt?" she starts, not sure of how to ask for what it is that she wants.

But rather than answering Santana, Brittany throws up her arms into a vast stretch instead. She yawns, like Puck did. "I'm so tired," she says. "I think I'll just go right to bed."

Santana pulls a face. "What?" she asks, suddenly panicked. Has Brittany actually forgotten that she promised to tell Santana her secret today? "But, Britt, you—I—"

Even through darkness, Santana can see Brittany smirk. "Something on your mind, darlin'?"

It takes Santana a full second to realize that Brittany is teasing her.

She shakes her head, both amused and not. "Oh, no you don't, Brittany Pierce!" she says. "You promised that you would tell me a secret this morning, and I've waited patiently all day to hear it. You're not getting out of it now."

Brittany laughs. "This is what you call patient, huh?" she teases. "You must have asked me about it three or four times already."

"I have not!" Santana complains. "One or two times, at most. Come on, BrittBritt. Please? Please?"

Santana bounces slightly on her toes and reaches for Brittany's hands, holding them to herself. Of course, Santana knows she's acting silly, but, then again, so is Brittany. Santana's grandmother would scold Santana for begging, but Santana doesn't care—and especially not when her tactics seem to work.

Brittany softens and bites her lip, suddenly bashful. "Santana," she says sweetly.

(Santana had never liked her own name until she heard Brittany say it.)

In the next second, Brittany's resolve seems to break. She leans forward, surpassingly gentle, and purses her lips, reaching for a kiss. For as much as Santana's heart and mind have waited all day to hear Brittany's secret, her body has waited for Brittany to kiss her for just as long and with just as much eagerness. Her breath hitches and her eyes flutter closed.

Except.

Brittany doesn't kiss Santana.

Santana waits, but the touch never comes. After a second, she opens her eyes just in time to see Brittany running off down the tent row, checking over her shoulder to make sure that Santana sees her go.

"Brittany!" Santana shrieks, starting off at a sprint.

"Shh," Brittany warns, drawing a finger to her lips. She wears her wiliest grin.

Brittany runs just a few paces ahead of Santana, not trying to outstrip her altogether but rather just to lead her along. She runs out past the billboard partition, traversing the borders of the white city and entering into the tall grass fields that sprawl behind it, taking one small hill and then another, laughing, giddy with something, until Santana laughs, too.

She starts to slow down as she reaches the crest of the second hill, turning back to look over her shoulder at Santana, illuminated by the fat gibbous moon just behind her on the horizon.

Unlike Brittany, Santana doesn't slow down at all.

Instead, she launches herself, closing the distance between herself and Brittany and wrapping her arms around Brittany's waist in a great bear hug. She doesn't exactly mean to knock the both of them over, but she does it anyway. Their feet tangle up beneath them and they dance, awkward, until suddenly they're both on the ground, jolted but laughing so hard that they can scarcely breathe.

Before Brittany can even as much as consider the possibility for escape, Santana rolls, straddling her in one quick motion, pinning her down at the hips. Santana's hair hangs like a dark curtain around them. Brittany gasps, surprised.

"Please, Britt?" Santana says. "Please tell me your secret?"

The moment changes at her word.

When Brittany meets Santana's eyes, she wears the ghost of her last smile, but also a searching look, deep, thoughtful, and wise. For a second, Santana feels that Brittany can see everything in her and feels utterly naked, like a new land, unsettled and open for exploration. Brittany reaches up and traces the edge of her thumb along the curve of Santana's face, following her jaw.

"I love you," she says, just so.

Of course, Santana had half-expected to hear the words all day. Even so, she almost can't comprehend their meaning now. Santana loves Brittany, but what does it mean, love? Is what Brittany feels the same as what she does? The same passionate generosity?

(The same wanting to give of all of one's best things?)

"You love me?" she whispers, not meaning to question it but wanting to hear Brittany say the words again and to explain.

Brittany seems to know.

She smoothes over Santana's cheek.

"I love you, Santana. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else in the whole world," she says in her wonderfully plain way, and, in the next second, she sits up, pressing her mouth to Santana's in a delicate kiss.

Their lips pop as they pull apart.

"Yeah?" Santana says.

"Yeah," Brittany says back. She reaches up and presses on Santana's shoulder, signaling for Santana to lie down on the grass, which Santana does. Brittany rolls on top of her, fitting their two bodies together, and kisses Santana again, this time deeper.

Santana speaks without thinking.

"Then why didn't you tell me?" she asks, mumbling against Brittany's lips.

Brittany pulls back. "What?"

Santana considers. She doesn't want to spoil the moment, of course, but it does niggle at her, somewhat—the idea that Brittany could love her so much without saying anything about it, even after Santana confessed her love to Brittany first.

"Why didn't you tell me after I told you?" Santana repeats. "And why couldn't you tell me today after lunch?"

She hates how small and pathetic her voice sounds. She knows it doesn't matter, really—not now that Brittany has told her—but she also can't help but wonder if maybe she did something wrong. Does Brittany know something about confessing love that she doesn't? She doesn't ever want to overstep with Brittany or to embarrass her.

Brittany fixes Santana with a serious look.

"Because I didn't want to scare you," she whispers, telling another secret.

"Brittany?" Santana says, not quite sure what she means.

Brittany strokes Santana's hair with the back of her hand. She leans down and presses a kiss to Santana's brow and then looks up at the sky as though she were reading a speech written in the stars. When she speaks again, her voice is louder than before.

"You told me that it scared you when we became friends so fast and that you didn't know how I could like you so much. I didn't want you to think that I only said 'I love you' because you said it first or that I'd said it for any other reason than because I really, really wanted to.

I think that sometimes you have a hard time accepting it when people give you nice things because you don't believe that you deserve them, but you do deserve them. You deserve every nice thing. I wanted you to believe it. I wanted you to feel happy and to know that I mean it—that I love you so much—because that's how it made me feel when you told me that you love me.

I know that sometimes you don't understand how someone could want to be around you because your daddy and Abuela kept things from you and then they left you alone, but I would never, ever do that to you. You know that, don't you? You know that I'll always stay with you, for as long as you want me. I love you, Santana, and I've loved you for a long, long time—probably since that day when I dressed you up like Cleopatra in the dressing tent. Or wait! Maybe since the day when we kissed in the big top. Or maybe before that—"

Brittany shakes her head, laughing her bashful, silent laugh. She looks at Santana, earnest.

"I've wanted to tell you so many times. I couldn't do it with words, but I did in other ways. Did you really not know?"

Santana grins, in spite of herself. "I think I did know," she admits, both surprised and not surprised to realize that it's true. Her copper penny feeling flips endless somersaults. "I love you, Brittany Pierce," she says, reaching up to nip Brittany's lip.

Brittany laughs. "I love you, too," she says.

A warm feeling spreads out between the both of them. Brittany buries both of her hands in Santana's hair and leans down at the same time that Santana sits up, their lips meeting in a way that steals Santana's breath. Santana opens her mouth against Brittany's, and Brittany follows her lead, smiling as she slips her tongue past Santana's lips. Santana groans, feeling more at home and safer than she has all day.

They kiss for a long while, working their lips together and tasting the contours of each other's mouths. Their breath turns shallow and quick. Eventually, Brittany retracts from Santana with a sigh.

"If I keep kissing you like this, I won't be able to stop," she says.

"Then don't stop," Santana suggests, setting her hands on Brittany's hips.

She feels almost dizzy from loving Brittany so much, drunk on their privacy here in the dark. Something thrums inside her, and she can't help but grin.

Brittany laughs and stops Santana from petting over her waist. "Santana," she says seriously, "I don't want to get you in trouble again."

Santana wants to pout, but she knows that Brittany is right. Puck was so angry with her last night. She doesn't want to provoke him again.

"Okay," she says, kissing Brittany more chastely this time to show her deference.

Brittany smiles and shuffles off of Santana's lap, lying down beside her in the grass, and both girls sigh, more contented than they could perhaps explain. Brittany cradles her head against one arm and looks into Santana's eyes. Santana reaches out, stroking over Brittany's hipbone with her free hand.

"We're like sweethearts," Brittany mumbles, dreamy, "only more somehow."

(That's just it, Santana thinks.)

(That's their happy secret.)

It occurs to Santana then that this is what she really wanted, more than just to hear Brittany speak her secret aloud: to feel the true peace of them being together, in love and knowing it plainly. It's what she'll want for the rest of her life, really.

After everything that happened today, it's the happiest ending she could have asked for.

* * *

><p>When Santana returns to her own tent, she finds Puck already asleep on his mat, curled up upon the ground. She hums a happy note and removes the bangles from her wrist, one by one by one. Even when she lies down on her cot, she wears the widest smile.<p>

She loves Brittany Pierce more than anything in the world.

Brittany Pierce loves her back.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>**It takes a village to tell this story. I couldn't have made it through the first part of this chapter without my incredible beta Han, who understands this story better than I do and whose input is so beyond helpful. She talked me through an inordinate amount of panicking while this chapter was in its nascent stages; I appreciate her more than I can say. #brotp: with the u and everything**

**I also couldn't have made it through this chapter in general without some special pinch-hitting beta work from the one and only Dr. Ruth, who stepped in at the last minute to help. Seriously, y'all should go leave some love in her Ask box at doctoruth on tumblr, if you feel obliged. She came in at the last minute, plowed through all thirty-odd thousand words of this puppy and left me the most astute and careful comments I could have ever wanted. She is amazing in every way and I am very much in her debt.**

**Also, a round of applause for my awesome Spanish translator Lu, a linguistic goddess in every sense of the words. Her prompt responses to my queries and the careful thought she puts into her translations save my life in so many ways.**

**For general information purposes: A person having 50 USD in 1898 would be roughly equivalent to a person having 1389 USD now—which is to say that it would be a considerable amount of money for a teenager to have all to herself.**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

**Santana translates what she tells Brittany during their word game herself.**

**As for the other stuff...**

_**(El amor es sufrido y es benigno. El amor no tiene el enviada, no hace sinrazón, no se ensancha.) : (Love is patient and it is kind. Love doesn't envy, doesn't boast, and isn't proud.) [1 Corinthians 13:4 Reina Valera Bible 1862 Ed.]**_

_**(Para siempre y por siempre, amén.) : (Forever and ever, amen.)**_

_**pasteles : a traditional Puerto Rican dish eaten at Christmastime, first developed by the Taíno Amerindians and later adopted by European settlers. While traditional pasteles are made from either from plantains or yucca and wrapped in plantain leaves for cooking, Santana's grandmother had to alter her recipe due to a scarcity of ingredients in America. In New York, she made "sweet potato pasteles," filling the husk and pulp of sweet potatoes with nuts, beans, and meat.**_


	14. Cross Your Heart

**Chapter 12: Cross Your Heart**

**Wednesday, July 6th, 1898: Dyersville, Iowa**

Santana dreams in watercolor and wakes as soon as Puck does, sitting up from her cot at the first sounds of his stirring. Everything runs close to the surface through her—the thrill of Brittany loving her just as she loves Brittany and a shifting anxiety about what will become of the circus after last night's fiasco with Will.

For those first few quiet moments when Puck will only groan and stretch his spine, Santana waits on thready breaths, wondering if he won't tell her that Mr. Adams is entirely bankrupt now and that everything is over—that there will be no more shows for the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie, either this week or ever.

He doesn't, of course.

He says, "Come on, ladybird. We're going to Dyersville today," as if _Dyersville_ should mean something to her—as if she should know the place as he does.

She doesn't, of course.

* * *

><p>After Santana and Puck wash their faces and teeth in the basin, they step outside into the paling moonlight, and Santana stands by, watching in silence as Puck dismantles their tent. She slaps the mosquitoes that graze her arms and exposed collarbones.<p>

"Sorry, ladybird," Puck apologizes, as though it were his fault that the Iowa prairie is home to more insects than the sky is stars.

When Puck slips his hand into Santana's after finishing his work, it catches her off guard; she had been thinking of someone else's palms, warm against her own, and hadn't remembered Puck's new need to keep close to her. She gasps.

(It's because she's surprised.)

Puck stiffens at Santana's intake of breath, suddenly self-conscious for his own boldness. "May I walk you to breakfast?" he asks in retrospect. He doesn't retract his touch.

Though her first impulse is to yank her hand away from his, Santana refrains. She told herself she wouldn't be harsh to Puck anymore, and he hasn't done anything wrong, really.

(He just isn't the right person, is all.)

"Oh, uh, sure thing," Santana stammers. When Puck flashes her a questioning look, Santana smiles a show smile at him, reassuring. _"Claro, claro,"_ she says, as though she were telling fortunes on the midway.

Puck buys Santana's act and relaxes his grip, pacified. He ducks his head in a slight bow before leading Santana onward through the grass. Though Puck seems as pleased with Santana's word as if she had paid him a compliment with it, Santana can hardly fuss about him the least bit in return, for she's already across camp with Brittany in her thoughts and heart.

_Brittany Pierce is in love with her._

The moonlight seems as gay to Santana as midday sun, bright for her knowledge that the most wonderful girl in the world somehow feels that she herself is wonderful just the same. She remembers Brittany painting her mouth with kisses last night. She remembers the way that Brittany's eyes looked when Brittany actually spoke the beautiful words—like day and night sky met in one.

_Brittany Pierce loves her back._

Santana can hardly fathom the notion.

Two weeks ago, she never could have imagined anything so happy, even if she had read about it in a book written in the most exquisite prose. For a girl who had thought that no one would ever truly love her again after her father died, it seems such a rare and precious gift to have love—and not just from anyone but from the person she most adores and admires out of all the people in the world.

Brittany Pierce found her when she was alone, and now she won't ever have to feel lonely again.

"You're sure in a cheerful mood this morning," Puck observes, wheeling Santana into the mess.

For a second, Santana worries that Puck means to tease her—has she been scowling?—but then she realizes that she wears a smile wide enough to bring the dimples out on her cheeks. She fixes her face and sniffs. "Am I not usually?"

She expects Puck to say something sharp in reply, but he doesn't. He stares at her, his eyes very dark even under the firelight. "No," he says bluntly. "But sometimes being somber is the same as being thoughtful, when it comes to you, ladybird—and even if you're being thoughtful about something droll."

It may be the wisest thing that Puck has ever said concerning Santana.

Santana gawps at Puck, amazed that he would pay enough attention to notice such a trait in her. Part of her wants Puck to elaborate—to go on to say what he believes she thinks about, whether it were droll or not. He doesn't, though. Instead, he plays his observation off with a shrug, steering Santana onto a bench at the breakfast table.

"Puck—," Santana starts, but he doesn't allow her to finish.

"Sit tight, ladybird," he says. "I'll bring you some hotcakes."

Somehow, he seems almost embarrassed of himself for being so right about her somberness. His idiot smile wavers for the quickest instant, and then he hurries away, retreating before Santana can ask him anything else. As he goes, Santana can't help but wonder if he hasn't someway turned a corner with her, in terms of his regard.

At the bachelor cottage, Puck scarcely paid Santana real mind, liking to have her around in the same careless sort of way that a boy likes to have a favorite toy by his side, even when he's playing at a game that doesn't involve it. But now Puck seems attentive—enthused, even. Santana has to wonder if it is only her own determination to treat Puck more kindly that's made the difference in him or if something else has changed his ways.

Brittany appears before Puck returns with Santana's plate, creeping up from behind Santana and taking hold of her shoulders.

"Hello," she says, close to Santana's ear, and, at that, Santana forgets any questions she may have concerning Noah Puckerman.

She's all Brittany, Brittany, Brittany again.

(She always somehow is.)

"Mm, good morning," Santana purrs, turning her head so that her cheeks and Brittany's are suddenly close enough for kisses. Their lips don't touch each other, but Santana feels a pleasant jolt as if they do. She wants to ask if Brittany has eaten yet, but she can't form the question before Brittany mumbles against her skin.

"Maybe the night with the fireflies, darlin'."

"What?" Santana says, confused.

Brittany's fingers stroke over Santana's skin and shirtsleeves. She's answering a question that Santana hasn't asked. Her nose nudges Santana's face.

"Maybe in the firelight, I mean," Brittany mumbles again, drawing in a deep breath of something before pulling away from Santana. Her eyes glint and she gives her cat grin. "I'm going to go get myself a plate," she says. "I'll be right back."

And then she's away.

Though what Brittany said baffles Santana, it also comforts her, for Santana loves Brittany's riddles as much as she loves the rest of her. It's nice to know that, even having told Santana her big secret, Brittany will still have her little mysteries.

(Santana hadn't known she loved surprises until she knew that she was in love with Brittany.)

Puck returns with Santana's plate. "Still cheerful, ladybird?" he notes, quirking an eyebrow at Santana's lingering Brittany-smile.

Santana shoots a glance over at Brittany, fixing herself a plate just a few yards away. She smiles even wider. "The cheerfullest," she says.

(The truth, the truth, the truth.)

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana perch atop heavy crates of midway ticket stubs at the front of the circus cart, silhouetted before a backdrop of innumerable stars. They brace their ankles against the edges of the crates and dig their fingernails into the wood grain to balance. Puck leans against the cart tailgate, facing them. He rests on his elbows and wears his devil smirk against the breeze, his hat pulled down low upon his brow.<p>

The sky reminds Santana of a single ream of dark fabric, like when she was a child and used to hide in her grandmother's dressing closet, shrouded under so many drab skirts and petticoats. Pinpricks of starlight dot the long swathe of the vast expanse, and the waning gibbous moon, still glutted from Sunday last, presides over everything. With warm wind whipping at their hair and threatening to tear words from their lips should they speak aloud, neither Brittany nor Santana says anything. Instead, they grin at each other, open-mouthed and feeling more in the heavens than they do on the earth.

Though Independence was a failed stop for the circus, Santana can't bring herself to entirely dislike the place. Brittany Pierce told Santana her most important secret in this town, after all, and anyplace where that has happened can't be so altogether bad.

Just as the circus processional passes under the pennants of the Rush Park Kite Track, the cart jogs over a rut in the road, and Santana bobbles where she sits, nearly toppling over before Brittany reaches out to catch her with one arm, grabbing her around the shoulders. Brittany doesn't let go even once Santana rights herself and instead holds Santana close to her, their edges run up alongside one another. Brittany's embrace is sure and safe, and Santana adores it, as she does Brittany.

"You feel nice," she whispers close to Brittany's ear, blocking the compliment both from the wind and from Puck potentially eavesdropping.

Brittany doesn't make a reply. She squeezes Santana tighter to her side, and Santana all but melts for her touch. Puck looks on from the back of the cart, chewing a plug of tobacco fat inside his cheek and watching Brittany and Santana with nary a glint of recognition behind his eyes—just an uninformed kind of lassitude as he sees everything but observes nothing.

When the circus reaches the train depot, Brittany leads Puck and Santana to a boxcar along the middle of the line. Their trio joins Blaine, Rory, the Bearded Lady, and a few midway vendors inside the open compartment.

"Good morning!" Blaine greets as Puck, Brittany, and Santana clamber into the car, more chipper than any person has a right to be before the sun has risen. He tips his trilby hat to them and says, "You ladies weren't planning to sleep on the train ride, were you?"

It's a strange question for him to ask and one that makes Santana nervous, though she doesn't know why. She looks to Brittany to answer for the pair of them. Brittany offers Blaine a small shrug.

Whatever Brittany means by the shrug, Blaine seems to take it as a signal that she would be amenable to doing something other than napping on the way to Dyersville. He smiles and reaches for an object at his back, pulling it forward along the boxcar floor until Brittany and Santana can see what it is—namely, a wicker basket filled with bright yellow flowers with tall, dark-seeded centers.

Black-eyed Susan.

"I picked these this morning during breakfast," Blaine explains. "I want to make wreaths that I can throw to the crowd during the parade into Dyersville. Can't you just imagine how happy it would make the little girls in town to get them? I asked this joker to help me," he says, nodding at Rory, slumped against the corner of the car, "but he says his hands aren't right for the job, so I was wondering if perhaps you all might be more obliged to braid some flowers than he is? I know I've seen you make some lovely garlands before, Miss Pierce, and I have high hopes that you're similarly skilled, Mrs. Puckerman."

When Santana flinches at Blaine calling her by Puck's surname, Blaine mistakes her start for something that it isn't.

"Oh!" he says quickly, glancing over at Puck. "Only if it's all right by your mister, of course! Noah, would you mind if I borrowed your bride for just a while?"

Puck rolls his eyes at Blaine's earnestness but nevertheless answers the question nicely, by his standards. "If you want to help him, that's fine by me, ladybird," he says. "It's your choice."

"If Britt wants to," Santana shrugs, feeling strange having the decision put all to her.

Brittany wears her cat-grin. "I like braiding flowers," she says, shrugging, as well.

Blaine claps, delighted. "Then it's settled! We'll make flower wreaths."

(If there has ever been another boy so thrilled about wild asters, Santana wouldn't believe it.)

Santana waits alongside Brittany as Blaine begins to sort through his basket, divvying up the blooms by threes. In the meanwhile, Puck settles up against the wall and covers his eyes with his hat. He seems intent upon sleeping the ride away, not yet fully rested from all the excitement of yesterday and last night. Santana doesn't begrudge him his nap and instead feels glad to have some time to spend with Brittany sans his watchful supervision. She offers Brittany a smile while Blaine still has his head down.

_Hi_, she mouths.

_Hi_, Brittany mouths back.

(The way Santana figures, any morning spent with Brittany and wildflowers is bound to be a good one.)

* * *

><p>It occurs to Santana that Blaine is probably rather a good clown, going out of his way to make little children smile. It also occurs to her that she hardly knows anything about Blaine, aside from what type of hat he likes to wear and that he seems like a rather excitable little fellow. Has he always been with Mr. Adams' circus, she wonders, or did he join up as a youth, like Puck?<p>

(There are still so many people at the circus that Santana has yet to truly meet.)

Santana has never really watched Blaine when the clowns perform during the circus shows, as she always has her gaze trained to Sam instead. She's also never really had a full conversation with Blaine—a point of fact which doesn't change this morning, even though Santana works in close proximity to him for once.

In fact, neither Blaine nor Brittany or Santana says much of anything as they go about their task, both out of respect to all the sleeping people in their cabin and also because constructing flower wreaths is hardly the kind of work that requires many words.

They make their knots in the flower stems silently and wearing smiles, happy to be doing a good turn but also content not to make much of it between them. When necessary, they pass one another new blooms and help one another link multiple braids together. It doesn't take long for them to work through almost all the contents of Blaine's basket, and particularly since Brittany is so handy in this medium.

As Blaine starts to gather some of the extra flower petals that have spilled onto the boxcar floor, sweeping them into a pile of sunshine with the edge of his hand, Brittany meets Santana's eyes, wearing her mischief-making grin. She plucks up one of the wreaths she made and nods her head in Puck's direction.

At first, Santana doesn't follow Brittany's meaning, and she watches, perplexed, as Brittany crawls on fours over to where Puck sleeps, slumped at the corner of the car. She only starts to realize Brittany's intentions as Brittany sidles up to Puck's shoulder, stopping just beside it. Brittany wags her eyebrows at Santana and very gently sets the flower chain over Puck's hat, crowning him with it.

Santana laughs aloud before she can stop herself, and, when she does so, it draws Blaine's attention. Once he sees Brittany's joke, Blaine laughs, too, somewhere between amused and shocked at Brittany's audacity. In the next second, Blaine selects a flower wreath from the wicker basket and then thrusts the thing at Santana, urging her to do the same.

Soon Puck has three people decorating him with yellow blooms, all of them stifling giggles as they drape flowers over the brim of his hat and upon his shoulders.

"He looks very pretty," Blaine whispers.

"He smells pretty, too," Brittany smirks.

Santana laughs, knowing how very cross Puck will be when he awakens to find himself done up in more garlands than a Maypole. She sets a small wreath about his kneecap.

_¿Acaso Salomón en toda su gloria vistió como uno de éstos?_

Puck doesn't disappoint Santana's expectations.

He stirs just as the train begins to slow, approaching the Dyersville depot. "What the Sam Hill?!" he snarls, sitting up with a start. He swipes at the flowers hanging from his hat as though they were a snake descending from a tree branch overhead. That's all it takes to get Brittany, Santana, and Blaine laughing and to wake all the other sleeping passengers in the cabin at once. Puck snatches at the flowers over his vest with his whole hand. "Goddamn it, Anderson!"

"Don't ruin them!" Santana warns, still laughing as she grabs for Puck's wrist, stilling Puck before he can cause real damage.

For the briefest instant, Puck seems as if he wants to protest, but then he softens, leaning back against the boxcar wall in defeat. His snarl transforms into a boyish expression, part embarrassment, part something else that Santana can't read. He blushes about his ears.

"You're lucky I like you so well, ladybird," he grouses, allowing Santana to gather up the garland herself, her touch much gentler than his ever could be.

Santana rolls her eyes. "Well, you're just lucky that we didn't have more flowers," she counters.

* * *

><p>When Blaine asks Puck if he would like to help distribute flower wreaths during the parade, Puck says he surely wouldn't. When Blaine asks Brittany and Santana if they would like to help distribute flower wreaths during the parade, they say of course they would.<p>

Puck ends up riding on the bench of a circus wagon with the burly yeller supe—Matt, Puck calls him—while Brittany, Blaine, and Santana go dancing behind the wagon's backend on foot, running over to the little children lined up along the street and handing out flowers to whichever ones aren't too shy to accept their gifts.

Brittany and Santana link pinky fingers as they go and frolic, the garlands slung over their wrists.

One little girl points up at Santana, a smile wide upon her face. The girl has long, light eyelashes and wears a pretty white dress of cotton batiste, embroidered around the yoke. Too young to feel ashamed for staring, she gapes at Santana's bangle bracelets and pretty rainbow sashes.

"Look, Mama, a princess!"

"That's not a princess, honey. That's a gypsy."

"Look, Mama, a gypsy princess!"

Santana can tell by the way the mother's lips thin that she would prefer it if her daughter never saw another person like Santana again. The mother sets a hand on her daughter's bonnet, protecting her little one from a danger that isn't there. Despite her caution, wonderment shines in her daughter's eyes—sweet, adoring, and uncomplicated.

Santana feels a pang.

She looks away from the mother and child and would go away from them too, too, except that at that precise moment Brittany gives her finger a tug. Before Santana can protest, she and Brittany stand just in front of the little girl. Brittany crouches down to meet the child's eyes, kneeling at the edge of the road, knees ground into the dirt.

"She's the prettiest gypsy princess, isn't she?" Brittany says reverently, something very like appreciation bright behind her eyes. With an air of ceremony, she crowns the little girl with a garland of Black-eyed Susan. "And now you're a princess, just like she is."

The mother looks flabbergasted, but the little girl beams, dimples deep in her cheeks.

For her part, Santana once again finds that she feels two conflicting emotions at once—adoration for Brittany and her compliment, on the one hand, and nervousness concerning the mother's reaction, on the other. After all, Santana doesn't want Brittany to get in trouble for saying things she oughtn't to, and especially not on her account.

She waits until Brittany leads her back to the center of the street to voice her worry. "Britt, you really shouldn't have," she mumbles, dizzy from Brittany's rule-breaking as well as from Brittany's compliment.

Brittany shrugs, unconcerned. "It made her happy and it was the truth," she says simply and as if that's all the more there is to the matter.

Santana wants to believe just as easily as Brittany does that things are really as straightforward as simply showing goodwill toward strangers and telling the truth when one can. The trouble is that Santana can't bring herself to trust in the goodness of people in the same way that Brittany does.

Something inside Santana nags and whispers that Brittany is an exception. Not everyone will return kindness for kindness—and especially not kindness for spite. Not everyone will like the truth when they see it or even recognize it for truth when they do.

While Brittany could stand before the board of the world and trust the knife throws of any number of people, Santana can only do so for just one person—for Brittany, who is unlike anyone else Santana has ever known.

Of course, the fact that an exception like Brittany exists gladdens Santana more than she can say and helps her to want to trust more freely. Santana doesn't know how it's possible, but Brittany has never seemed to think that Santana has anything wrong with her, even though everyone else in the world would disagree.

With Brittany, Santana just feels right.

_Brittany Pierce is in love with her._

Santana can still scarcely even understand by what miracle it's possible; she only knows that it's so without knowing how. She catches Brittany staring at her from the corner of her eye.

"What're you smiling at, darlin'?" Brittany asks, matching Santana's look with a cat-smile of her own. She starts to swing her and Santana's hands between them.

Santana shrugs, unable to explain all that she feels. "You just called me a princess again, is all," she says.

(It's almost exactly what she means, or at least the most important part of it.)

* * *

><p>Dyersville is a well-trimmed town of red and brown brick. A Catholic church more ornate than any structure Santana has encountered since leaving New York City stands at a prominent intersection just beyond the main row of shops. The church's two twin spires, capped with black steeples and iron crosses, cast long shadows across the street below it.<p>

The main road through town doesn't extend very far and soon the circus turns off onto a side avenue, foregoing a longer parade in favor of making early camp. When the circus takes its detour, Brittany and Santana run to catch up with Puck's wagon and clamber onto the back of it, riding the rest of the way to their destination rather than walking there.

From then on, the circus processional follows a dirt byway along the edge of a river until it comes upon a sprawling wooded area and the first frameworks of the white city. Tents rise up from the grass, only partway constructed. They remind Santana of stretching dogs, rumps in the air and noses to the turf. The wagons only just manage to circle up before someone starts hollering at the company.

Ken.

"Come on, you lot! Come on over here!"

Santana's heart falls when she sees Ken gesturing to a high point in the wagon bay—to Mr. Adams perched atop his flatbed cart. It isn't payday yet, and, even if it were, Mr. Adams appears far too cross to have any good news for the company regarding their current situation. He wears a stony expression, his jaw tight and a spot above his temple throbbing, visible even from some distance away. Santana shoots a glance at Brittany just as Puck appears at their wagon's mud flap.

"Hup, hup, ladies," Puck states brusquely, helping first Brittany and then Santana down from the wagon bed, though his gaze remains trained to Mr. Adams all the while.

Their little trio takes their places at the center of the throng, jostled up alongside Finn Hudson, Kurt Hummel, and Mr. and Mrs. Evans and their two younger children. Vaguely, it occurs to Santana that she hasn't seen either Sam Evans or Ma Jones today as of yet. She doesn't have time to wonder more about their absence or fret for it before Mr. Adams demands the attention of the crowd, though.

At once, Mr. Adams produces a folded document from the back pocket of his trousers and holds it up for his employees to see, giving it an emphatic shake. When he speaks, he does so through gritted teeth, though his voice sounds surprisingly and even startlingly calm, like crushed velvet smoothed beneath an open hand.

"Roderick Remington has been with the Associated Press since before it was incorporated. For twenty-seven years, he's been a newspaper man. He's one of the most esteemed reporters on the A.P. dispatch. His report on our business will be distributed on Friday morning, all across the great states of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Some seventeen newspapers will run this bulletin. As you can see, Mr. Remington was kind enough to send me an advanced copy of his article."

Here, Mr. Adams waves the paper high in the air and laughs, though nothing he's said so far seems especially humorous, at least to Santana's ear. When Mr. Adams lifts his eyes again, they blaze. He straightens out his paper with a hard shake and reads directly from a headline somewhere on the front page. His voice is a lion's roar.

_"'Concerned Citizens Must Rally for the Disbandment of the J.P.A. Circus for the Good of the Public: How to Stop the Immorality, Debauchery, and Unchristian Horrors of the Itinerant Carnival Lifestyle from Doing Great Harm to Our Children'_—that's the title of his exposé!"

Mr. Adams laughs again, a frayed, unwell sound. He searches the crowd before returning to his paper.

"Shall I read it to you?" he asks, though his answer seems already determined.

_"'It was in the thriving farm town of Ackley, Iowa that I was initiated into the mysteries of the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie in the midst of great merriments for their celebration of the Glorious Fourth. Little did I know it at the time, but I had entered into an engagement far more vile than such a lively name or date would suggest._

_Though the owner of the operation, one Mr. Jonah P. Adams of Charlotte, North Carolina, comports himself as a gentleman, his business is entirely devoid of morals and not only debauched but unfriendly. Adams is a fellow withal wiry and muscular, of breadth without length and a type that the old bugbear of my schoolboy days, Euclid, would call the antithesis of a line. He is a swindler and great defrauder who claims to purvey 'upstanding and high quality entertainment of a most wholesome sort' but who knowingly employs a rabble of unsociable and depraved charlatans and criminal types who belong more in asylums than they do in the public eye.'"_

As Mr. Adams reads Mr. Remington's unflattering description of his body, he starts to straighten up, filling more and more space, despite his small stature. His shoulders somehow seem to broaden as he mounts in his anger. He suddenly appears taller, wider, and greater than he is. Everything in Mr. Adams seems to want to undo Mr. Remington's slanders so badly that even his flesh and bones would rebut the words on the page.

_"'When I first arrived at the circus, I came forewarned that such operations often employ a class of persons rollicking and roistering, with men who prefer short pipes and tobies of ale to wine and cigars and whose dressing-rooms are a theatrical exhibition of everything that is coarse and objectionable. Several of my colleagues had made more than the vague suggestion to me that some of the ladies at the circus might be a little loose in their notions of strict propriety. However, being the impartial public observer that I am, I had determined to stay my own judgment until I had observed these folks throughout the course of their exertions and with my own two eyes._

_Though Mr. Adams spared no small flattery when introducing me to his employees, even his mandate that they make me feel welcome in their camp could not dissuade those reprobate persons from their natural state of rancor and incivility._

_It perhaps should not have come as such a shock to me that this ragtag assemblage, with its high population of irresolute foreigners—including a magician from Bohemia, female horseback riders from the Empire of Russia, Gypsies, and Oriental tumblers—and men with long criminal histories, should show such a distaste for the proclivities of polite society, but so tender is my heart that even after many years spent reporting on the depravities of humanity, it is still my first impulse to anticipate goodness in my fellow men, however it might disadvantage me to do so._

_How great was my surprise, then, to witness the sins that go on under the big top!_

_What I report to you next might cause alarm to any of my dear readers who are delicate of constitution or susceptible to moral distress in the face of great degeneracy. Nevertheless, I feel it is my duty as a Reporter of the Truth to convey to you some of the sights I've seen and words I've heard while cloistered in the circus camp amongst such an untoward number as those employees of Mr. J.P. Adams.'"_

By now, Mr. Adams is in fine form, frothing like the ocean crashed in upon itself. His whole face burns red and he spits at every word.

_"'To start off with, the circus runs afoul with many instances of cohabitation. Men and ladies by no means related, either through blood or by marriage, sleep in close quarters to one another, with nothing but flimsy walls of fabric between them and with no one looking over what happens amongst their ranks after the fall of night._

_While your tenderhearted reporter could not bear to listen at the doors of these tents after the final show had played, he did observe many of the young people of the circus keeping company with one another with nary any supervision and with such small space between them that one could scarcely insert a Bible betwixt their various persons._

_By day, men and women worked right alongside each other, as did red-blooded American men and Negroes, sharing everything in common to such a degree that one must wonder what amongst them the one group would forbid the other, if asked._

_Such coarse language I have never heard until I visited the circus—and I have sailed on ships with sailors whose own mothers had disavowed them for their roughness!_

_The chief property man at the circus—a malcontented half-breed with the most offensive halitosis—called me a 'chucking cuss' not two minutes after Mr. Adams had made his introduction of me to the company. I later learned that I should have considered myself honored that the property man would so elevate his usual speech on my account. In preparation for the celebrations of the Glorious Fourth, this fellow let out such a spew of blasphemies and expletives at his young underlings that even a seasoned railway man would have blushed to hear it!'"_

Ken wilts where he stands before Mr. Adams' cart, mortified to hear himself singled out in Mr. Remington's prose. For his part, Mr. Adams won't look at Ken but radiates such strong derision for Ken's actions that Santana can feel it even from where she stands.

As he continues to read, Mr. Adams' voice reaches a fever pitch, so loud that someone passing by on the main road into town might hear him.

_"'Such rudeness as his seems customary at the circus, for not a single person in the company would willingly stop to answer my questions for them, though I importuned them to do so with the utmost politeness. Indeed, even when I sought these persons at their acts on the midway, when they ought to have been at leisure to speak to anyone who wished himself entertained, none of them would as much as tell me the time, though I asked it._

_Excluded from the madding crowd by their surliness towards me, I watched all the more keenly to see if I could discern the habits of these lowly creatures by observation rather than interrogation. Would to God that I could forget what I saw, for no Christian person should have such images seared into his mind!_

_Near the circus dressing tents, I encountered both men and ladies in all states of undress and running about in the open, with no regard for decency. A lady in only her petticoat—no older than fifteen years of age, I'm sure—walked by me under the noonday sun and had not the courtesy to blush, though she met my eyes whilst without her overskirt._

_I found men and women stealing kisses in all corners of the camp, performers extorting money from patrons on the midway through subterfuge and trickery, and no small number of persons drunk before ten o'clock in the day. Sights for which I have no name turned my blood cold in my veins._

_When I sought to ask Mr. Adams about how he enforces any sort of ethical comportment amongst his employees, he told me that he didn't concern himself with such matters and tried to divert my attention to having a tour of his lion cages instead._

_'My man has them under such perfect control that we could walk in there this minute without a moment's hesitation. Would you like to go in? There's no danger,' said he—though I certainly sensed danger myself._

_Like Daniel tossed into the lion's den, I found myself encircled about by the coarsest brutes._

_My experience at the circus has convinced me of one thing, namely, that from the proprietor down to the lowest supe and stableman, all at the circus, without exception, lead a hellish life, and even their short nights and long journeys in the hot sun over sandy, dusty roads, their processions in the midday glare, and their thoroughly broken days cannot account for the strangeness of their manners or their utter disregard for laws of Man and God._

_Though Mr. Adams made it plain to me that his outfit intends to tour through many of the great Midwestern states before the summer's end, it is my recommendation to any man who is a friend to civility, a lover of law, and a holder to morals that the people of this region ought to campaign against the circus coming to their towns and bringing with it such profanities, whoredoms, and abominations as those I have described above. The voice of the public is the only means through which our society can silence the menace of the circus and save our young ones from coming under its degenerate influence._

_While I had visited the circus hoping to find it worthy of my endorsement, I can offer the place no praise having spent a day there. I can present only warning and say that everyone should stay away when the circus comes to town.'"_

By the final sentence, Mr. Adams bites down so hard on each syllable that Santana worries he might chip his teeth.

He doesn't, of course.

But he does appear more aggravated than even Jesse St. James' jungle cats in their cage at high noon, his knuckles white as they curl around the paper in his hand, his whole frame quaking as if it can scarcely contain his fury.

Santana shudders, recognizing shadows of herself in many of Mr. Remington's sundry condemnations of the circus. She remembers what happened in her fortunetelling booth on the midway and in the alleyway between the derelict tents and burns with an angry sort of shame, upset with herself for allowing Mr. Remington to glimpse her in moments when she was indisposed, for one thing, and upset with him for invading her space to begin with, for another.

She finds that she hates the man for arriving at the circus already thoroughly convinced of its wickedness, having yet to even investigate its enterprise.

(She feels a pang, remembering that she did the same thing, coming from New York.)

Whatever Mr. Remington claims to the contrary in his article, Santana knows that he never intended to allow the circus a fair review. She listened to enough of her father's rants about "yellow journalism" and the intolerable practices of Messrs. Pulitzer and Hearst to know what type of reporter Mr. Remington is and what his tactics for drumming up readership amount to, after all.

He wanted to write something sensational and he did just that.

The circus never really stood a chance when it came to Remington's pen, and the more Santana considers how they didn't, the more she smolders with bitter resentment toward Remington, not just on her own account, but on account of the whole circus—on account of Puck, who won't hold grudges, though well he could; and of Mr. Evans, who prays nice things for people; and of Ma Jones, who feeds everyone, even when she has a broken heart; and of Sam, the nicest boy that Santana has ever met; and of Rachel, who can be kind to even those persons who treat her despitefully; and of Blaine, who braids flowers for little children he's never met before and will never see again; and of Kurt and of Rory and of little Stevie Evans, who can tell when a stranger feels sad just by how her face looks; and especially of Brittany, who is the single best person anywhere and who would lay down her own life for her poor father's sake, no matter how harshly he treats her.

("Circus folk are the salt of the earth, Santana.")

The fact that Mr. Remington could be cruel to all of these persons without knowing them both breaks Santana's heart and at the same time turns something to stone inside of her.

"That rotten old coward," Santana whispers through gritted teeth. _"¡Está mintiendo!"_

Though both Brittany and Puck look at Santana, in the one case, listening to hear more from her, and in the other case, affronted by her sudden show of emotion, Santana doesn't get the chance to explain her thinking before Mr. Adams regains his composure enough to address the crowd again.

"Have you any idea what this means?" he despairs, shaking the paper for a second time. He looks over his employees, not simply infuriated or distraught, but utterly lost. "After what happened yesterday, I scarcely managed to convince Mr. Fabray to stay with us through the weekend! A-a-and now we have this—this—animadversion stacked against us, as well! Do you all want to starve?!"

Though he undoubtedly means to accuse his workers, his question to them rings out more like a plea than anything else. It echoes, desperate and hopeless at the same time, and recalls to Santana how her father sounded when he tried to convince his mother to see her granddaughter one last time before death—to _perdona la niña, Madre, por favor_.

Santana almost can't stand to look at Mr. Adams now, with his face contorted into such an awful grimace. She shrinks at Brittany's side.

"All I had asked is that you accommodate the man—make him feel welcome in our camp, answer his questions, show him some hospitality! You're not incapable of it. Would it have ruined you to speak kindly to a stranger?"

Mr. Adams allows the question to hang in the air. He still clutches the paper in his hand. Now sweat drips down his brow and neck, saturating his collar. His eyes look mad, like Mrs. Schuester's, but also sad at the same time.

Circus-lonely, maybe.

He reaches up and loosens his cravat with a frantic hand, seemingly starved for breath. For a long while, he only stares at the crowd, gasping as he recovers. When he finally summons up his next words, he sounds not calm, but steely.

"We have two days before the article goes to print, and, in that time, I intend to get Mr. Remington back to this camp, even if it is to be the endeavor that finally kills me. Should I succeed in bringing him back here, I expect that you shall treat him as though he were your lord and king, do you hear?

Should I get news of any man, woman, or child doing anything even the least bit untoward in the presence of our guest, that person shall lose his employment at the circus surer than it's my name on the marquee, understand? I'll have the culprit and all his friends arrested for indecency! We're to be polite and mind our manners. Do you simpletons think you can manage that?

I swear by God that I will have no foul-ups, not today and not when Remington comes here again! You hear that? No foul-ups! I expect perfection today to make up for last night. If you fools try me, I'll have all of you red-lighted to a one!"

At his final exclamation, Mr. Adams turns on his heel. He slaps his papers to the flatbed of the cart before hopping down from it to the ground himself. Though he lands heavily upon the grass, he doesn't halt even for one second upon impact. He's on his feet and heading away before Ken can even work out whether or not to follow after him.

"Don't you all have work to do?" Mr. Adams bellows without turning to look at anyone, still charging off in the direction of his business tent.

The company jolts at his word and—to Santana's great surprise—actually begins to disperse, as though Mr. Adams had somehow shocked them into doing it. Kitchen girls scatter to the east, supes to the west, everyone else out to all points of the compass.

"Jesus H. Christ," Puck mutters, watching Mr. Adams and everyone retreat.

Santana scarcely registers what Puck says, for she can't stop herself from thinking about anything except how Mr. Remington likely planned for his visit to the circus to work out this way all along.

Her father used to rail against men whom he called "mountebanks"—false physicians who sold spurious medicines to sick folks for the purpose of making those folks sicker so that they would then purchase even more spurious medicines.

Roderick Remington is a mountebank if ever there was one.

What kind of bribe will Mr. Adams have to offer to lure that old huckster back to the circus to make a second investigation of the place?

(Santana had known she had a good reason to distrust Mr. Remington from the start.)

Briefly, Santana wonders if Mr. Adams knows how Mr. Remington has defrauded him, for it occurs to her that if an inexperienced person like herself can discern Mr. Remington's game, a shrewd businessman like Mr. Adams likely will have done so, as well. If he has, does his discernment make it worse or better for him, still having to play by Mr. Remington's rules? Is it worse or better to recognize one's own cage while one remains trapped inside of it?

As more people clear out of the wagon bay, Puck starts to look off in the direction of the road back into town. "I'm going to go put our things in the tent," he says to Santana. "Then I've somewhere to be."

He seems in a strange mood and Santana can't say whether it's from Mr. Adams castigating the company and Puck feeling guilty about it or for some other reason.

"Will you be all right here, ladybird?" he asks.

Santana slips her hand into Brittany's again. Her skin brushes up against the lone flower wreath still garlanding Brittany's wrist. "Sure thing," she says.

Puck hardly seems to register Santana's answer; he's already off somewhere beyond the white city, caught up in the same strange business he had to do yesterday. He chucks Santana's elbow as he goes past her, but he doesn't say another word to her, including goodbye.

Vaguely, Santana imagines that Puck feels the same way about Mr. Adams' distress that she did whenever her father arrived at the bachelor cottage still cross about something that had happened at his practice or with his patients.

Santana sometimes hid in her grandmother's bedroom because she hated to hear Papa shout. Does Puck have anywhere to hide, she wonders?

Brittany squeezes Santana's hand. "Are you okay?" Brittany asks, searching Santana's eyes.

"I am," Santana says. "I don't think Mr. Adams is, though. Are you okay, BrittBritt?"

Brittany nods. "I am," she says, though she doesn't smile.

Santana would kiss Brittany then, but they're not entirely alone; Finn, David, Matt, Rory, and a few other supes and clowns congregate about Mr. Adams' flatbed cart. At first, Santana thinks that they're preparing to load the cart with cargo, but then she notices how the boys seem entirely engrossed by something on the flatbed itself.

The advance copy of the article.

Though Mr. Adams just read the article aloud to the company, Santana can't help but want to see the object of her undoing for herself, and Brittany seems to share her impulse. The two girls meet eyes and make the wordless decision to join the boys in their inspection.

"Hey, fellas," Brittany says, leading Santana over to the cart by the pinky finger.

The boys grunt hellos and tip their hats to the girls, and some of them who stand directly in front of the cart even take a step back so as to allow Brittany and Santana to squeeze in front of them. Good manners notwithstanding, all of the boys still seem a bit stunned by what Mr. Remington wrote, looking vacant in the eyes and long in the faces, to the point where Santana wonders if there isn't something more on the page than what Mr. Adams told to the whole company—perhaps something worse than all of Mr. Remington's other libels.

Except.

There isn't.

Even just from a quick scan, Santana can see that Mr. Adams read the article exactly as it appears in print, from the title down to the last word.

However, he did fail to mention one particular item on the page: namely, Mr. Halberstadt's photograph of the company, situated just above the article's byline.

Whereas the circus in real time is a cascade of color, like the light that shines through the billboard partition at noontime made human and multiple, and whereas the circus folk themselves are more often show-smiling than not, the circus in a photograph is both monochrome and sullen.

The company stands in six jagged rows, amid which Santana immediately spots several familiar faces.

Sam and Finn pose at the back of the lot, their arms crossed bravely over their bodies and their chests puffed out, all for show. Puck is a dark figure on the edge of the fourth row, his eyes shady and vacuous on the page.

Will and Theresa Schuester stand grimacing alongside each other, the latter holding the former's hands so tightly that Santana winces in sympathy at the sight. Jesse St. James strikes a grand pose, blocking out several supes just behind him with the angle of his elbows and shoulders. Rachel Berry appears between her father and the quadroon manservant, their hands on her shoulders as she holds her skirt in a curtsy for the camera.

Ma Jones' kitchen girls surround Ma Jones like chambermaids would surround their empress, both attendant and protective.

Ken scowls out from amidst several of the circus freaks, the family of little people just in front of him and the Bearded Lady and Famed Giantess of Akron flanking him on either side.

Everyone wears hard, rigid expressions except for just two people.

Brittany and Santana occupy the very center of the photograph, their images stopped mid-movement. Brittany pulls Santana's hand in close toward her body, the gesture smudged like a shooting star, while Santana smoothes back her own hair with her free hand, tucking a loose lock behind her ear.

The same circus wear that tinges everything else in the photograph touches on the two girls, as well: Santana's deep grays and blacks get lost against each other, and Brittany blurs around the edges. Both girls appear ragamuffin and windswept, their clothing tattered and their hair in snarls, and yet, and yet, and yet—

Santana seems bashful but charmed and Brittany bold and charming. Both girls grin, their eyes and mouths soft for each other, and Santana's dimples show, even through the film grain.

If Brittany hadn't already confessed her love for Santana last night in a field of grass, Santana would have seen it today captured forever in a snapshot, for there's such a light to Brittany's face on the page that Santana can almost feel a glow from it now.

It's the same light that illuminates her own features.

It's Santana's first portrait.

Without thinking about what she's doing, Santana reaches out, her fingers tracing over the image. She had never before seen her own likeness anywhere but in a mirror or reflected in water until today. Who is this happy girl in the picture? Her father and grandmother wouldn't even recognize her.

(How many people will view this photograph in the Friday paper? Will readers in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota be able to see what Santana sees now and what Sam saw yesterday—the gypsy girl in love with the knife thrower's daughter and the knife thrower's daughter in love with her just the same?)

"Britt," Santana says, a lump of adoration rising to her throat.

When had Santana become so happy without realizing it? Just a few weeks ago, she had felt so lonely and miserable. Now she can't remember what it's like to feel anything but loved.

Santana glances up from the page to find Brittany wearing her purest look of affection. The expression resides more in Brittany's eyes than it does at her mouth and has more to do with reverent blue than even a change in Brittany's visage. Just seeing it causes Santana's heart to all but collapse for feeling so much.

(Her penny flips, her string tugs, her piano plays. She feels surprised in the best way possible because Brittany Pierce loves her.)

(She gasps.)

When Santana says her name, Brittany's head tilts just the slightest bit to the left, and her gaze shifts from Santana's eyes to Santana's mouth and then back to Santana's eyes again. Something in her expression turns deep and wanting and Santana can't help but react for it. She wets her lips and starts to close her eyes, fully expecting a kiss.

Except.

She and Brittany still aren't alone.

Santana only realizes it when one of the fellas shifts at her side.

She looks away from Brittany, startled to remember that they have company and then even more startled to see how closely their company watches their actions. Do the boys comprehend what they're seeing, Santana wonders, both on the page and just before them? She searches their faces for any glint of recognition but finds none.

Instead, she sees something else.

It takes Santana several seconds to distinguish what that something else is—namely, that the boys don't really look at Brittany and Santana as much as they look just at Santana, and that they aren't so much interested in her as they are in what she can potentially do for them.

Their eyes move back and forth between her and the page—and specifically between her and the caption which appears beneath Mr. Halberstadt's photograph.

They want to know how Mr. Remington has slandered them.

They know that Santana can tell them how he has.

After all, it was Finn Hudson who was the first person at the circus besides Puck to learn that Santana can read. He told Ma Jones Santana's secret, and Ma Jones told it to Mrs. Schuester. By this late date, is it really any wonder that the whole camp knows about Santana having more letters and learning than she ought to?

Sometimes it is very difficult to keep certain secrets at the circus.

"Oh," Santana says, unprepared to find herself at the center of attention. She points at the photograph to clarify. "Do you—?" she stammers, not entirely able to phrase the question for fear of impropriety. She looks to Brittany for reassurance. When Brittany offers her an encouraging nod, she restarts, "It says, 'The five-hundred souls under the employ of Mr. J.P. Adams, as photographed on July 4th, 1898, in Hardin County, Iowa.'"

Rory frowns. "Is that all?"

Santana nods. "That's all."

Finn Hudson makes a face like his thoughts are a bobber that a fish just pulled beneath the surface of a murky pond. He furrows his brow. "Oh," he says, turning to leave in a slow, confused kind of way.

He obviously expected something much worse than just a brief statement of place and time.

The other boys follow his lead and start to disperse, as well, unwilling to loiter any longer in one place, lest Ken find them out and shout at them for lollygagging.

Briefly, it occurs to Santana how very strange it is that out of a group of nearly ten persons, all of them except for herself and Brittany men, she should be the only one with enough education to read a simple passage aloud. She doesn't know what to make of the occurrence, and the boys seem not to know what to make of it, either; they cast glances at her as they walk away, wearing expressions equal parts distrustful and admiring.

Soon enough, Santana and Brittany find themselves alone together in the wagon bay.

Brittany hasn't stopped staring at Santana since Santana read the caption. Whereas the boys seemed unsure as to how to regard Santana's literacy, Brittany seems solely impressed by it herself. She grins like Santana is the best person she's ever seen. When Santana meets her eyes, Brittany's smile turns wily. Brittany bites her bottom lip.

"Is everyone gone?" she asks, not daring to look away from Santana, even for a second.

Santana checks to make sure that she and Brittany are alone. "Uh huh," she chirps.

Brittany's smile turns even wilier. "Good," she says, "because I've been waiting all morning to kiss you, darlin'."

She releases Santana's hand, opting to snake her arm around Santana's waist instead. In the next second, she pulls her and Santana's hips together and turns their bodies as if they were dancing, backing Santana up against the flatbed of the cart.

The strength and control in Brittany's motion sends a tremor through Santana's whole body, and Santana lets out a low groan, reeling and wedged between Brittany and the cart, as dizzy as if she'd just spent hours spinning circles. She fumbles to find a hold onto Brittany's person, settling for a spot just below Brittany's ribcage.

Brittany reaches up with her free hand and strokes Santana's hair away from her face, lifting Santana's chin, tilting Santana's head just so. Santana allows Brittany to lead her, closing her eyes and stilling herself in anticipation of Brittany's kiss.

Brittany's breath heats her mouth, and then Brittany's teeth graze her bottom lip. Then she and Brittany are kissing, full and deep, like they didn't get enough in the way of kisses last night in the field—like they could never get enough in the way of kisses, really. Brittany directs their motions, humming and grinning as she urges Santana to open her mouth just a bit.

"Mm," Brittany says, tasting the kiss, and Santana's heartbeat spreads out into her skin and between her legs. She feels wonderfully overwhelmed, so taken by Brittany that she can scarcely think straight.

They kiss once, twice, and then a final time, with Brittany trailing her lips from Santana's mouth to Santana's jaw, kissing once just below Santana's ear.

"Good morning," Brittany whispers, a smile in her voice.

"Good morning," Santana repeats through a breathless laugh. She thumbs over Brittany's ribs and laughs again, pulling Brittany in even closer to her so that their hips and bellies and breasts all align. "Amazing morning, actually. Best morning in the history."

"In the history?" Brittany repeats, scrunching up her nose.

Santana feels too happy to even blush at her own mistake. "That's how you say it in Spanish," she shrugs. "If you keep kissing me like that, I'll forget all my words, Britt."

Brittany pouts. "You'd better not. I like your words," she says. She nuzzles her head against Santana's. "Mm, I love you."

If Santana thought that it was wonderful hearing the words for the first time last night after waiting for them all day, she had underestimated the sheer exhilaration she would experience hearing them today, just because.

She nuzzles her head against Brittany's. "That's the best news in the world, Britt," she grins, "because I love you, too."

"Oh _lands_, Santana," Brittany says in the same way that a person might say it when someone has given her a gift that she finds just too thoughtful.

For a second, Santana expects that Brittany will kiss her again, but Brittany doesn't.

(Brittany always finds some way to surprise her.)

Instead, Brittany spins so that she's the one with her back against the cart and Santana rests against her. Brittany slouches into the cart's support and wraps both her arms around Santana, pulling Santana in close. With Brittany at a slight recline, she and Santana are very nearly of the same height—an unusual occurrence but one in which Brittany seems to revel. She sets her head on Santana's shoulder and breathes in the scent of Santana's hair, holding her.

Though they stand out in the open, Santana feels entirely safe.

At home.

Both girls sigh into the embrace.

"From the first day I met you, I just kept wishing that you'd like me as much as I liked you, and then you did, and then I loved you, and then you loved me, too," Brittany mumbles, her jaw still resting on Santana's shoulder. "How did we even get lucky enough to find each other?"

"I don't know," Santana says honestly. "I'm just glad that we did."

Brittany nods but doesn't reply aloud—and it's all right that she doesn't because she doesn't need to. Santana can feel Brittany's agreement by the way her body sinks, so relaxed and soft, against Santana's own. By now, Santana has folded her hands at the top of Brittany's back. She rubs her thumbs over the curve of Brittany's spine, mapping out the vertebrae, writing calm and care and love into the gaps between Brittany's hard and soft places.

Sun heat soaks into Santana's hair. Brittany heat soaks into Santana's skin. Without meaning to do it, Santana starts to imagine what it would be like to run her hands under Brittany's skirt here against the flatbed cart. Her heartbeat gives another hard pulse between her legs, and she wonders if Brittany can sense it.

Nothing Santana has ever done in her life has ever felt so right as touching Brittany in the tent, and Santana longs to try it again—to do it better and less clumsily and with more love laced into her movements. The way Brittany touched her was so perfect. and Santana almost aches to return some of that perfection to Brittany, as well as to have Brittany touch her again. Just thinking about it causes Santana to shift, her body rubbing hot against Brittany's.

_Oh._

Santana lets out a gasp.

Only then does she realize where she and Brittany stand and how very out-in-the-open they are. Though she hates to do so, Santana forces herself to peel back from Brittany just a bit, disconnecting their hips from each other and coaxing Brittany to lift her head from her shoulder. When Brittany whines, Santana gives her back another rub.

"What do you bet Mrs. Schuester still won't want to see us today?" Santana asks, squinting against the sun glare.

Brittany smirks. "Everything. She won't stop being sore at us until next week, I don't think. Or maybe next month, even."

Santana laughs. "Well, maybe if we're lucky, she'll never forgive us," she says.

Brittany shakes her head. "No," she says, "we haven't got it that good just yet. I think you would have had to slap her back for that to happen. Or I would have."

For the briefest instant, Santana allows herself to picture such an event in her mind. Mrs. Schuester would be so offended that she would probably frog march Brittany and Santana straight to Mr. Adams and demand their expulsion from the circus that instant.

"Let's not let it get to that, BrittBritt," Santana says shrewdly.

Brittany nods her consent. "Okay," she says. For a second, she smiles at Santana, but then suddenly she turns quiet and starts chewing her lip. Santana feels Brittany twiddle her thumbs where they link her hands at the small of Santana's back, abruptly nervous about something. Just as Santana is about to ask Brittany what troubles her, Brittany blurts out, "I don't think we should go see Ma Jones today, either."

Santana quirks an eyebrow. If they don't work for Mrs. Schuester today, they have to work for Ma Jones. They haven't another option. "Why?" she asks, astonished.

Brittany's gaze dances between Santana's eyes. "It's just—," Brittany stammers. "It's just that I don't think she'd like to see two folks like you and me who are, well—when she can't—"

"—when she can't be," Santana finishes, knowing the words that Brittany omitted.

Santana's heart aches with the same sympathetic pain she felt yesterday as she thinks on Ma Jones' predicament. It also swells with adoration for Brittany, who's thoughtful and compassionate enough to know how much it could gall a girl who just had to give up on love to find herself in the presence of two persons who are so in love that they can hardly see straight for it.

"Right," Brittany says.

"Right," Santana says back. They stare at each other for a long while before Santana asks, "Then what shall we do today, BrittBritt?"

"You don't suppose the fellas need help mending zebra fences or feeding the elephants, do you?" Brittany jokes.

Though nothing in what Brittany says suggests the notion to Santana, at Brittany's word, Santana realizes what she and Brittany ought to do about their lack of morning work. "Britt," she says, standing up a bit straighter. "You know how Mr. Adams said that the shows need to be perfect from now on?"

Brittany nods, aware that Santana has come upon an idea but not what the idea is. Her brow furrows, and she waits for Santana to explain herself.

"You know what would help the show be perfect?" Santana leads.

"What?" Brittany says.

Santana draws a breath, steeling herself. "If it included a knife act with a knife thrower who could, well—"

"—see," Brittany finishes.

Immediately, Santana searches Brittany's eyes, wondering if Brittany will want to practice throwing today. She and Santana haven't managed to get in any more time with the board since that first occasion in the woods, and Santana doesn't know if Brittany will even want to try the act again, now that she's had more time to consider things.

(Santana knows that, for herself, she often tends to become more afraid of precarious situations the longer she has to think about them in advance.)

(Of course, Brittany is so much braver than she is.)

It takes a long while for Brittany to say anything. She searches Santana's eyes for an unnamable something and then searches inside herself before she finally gives a nod. "Okay," she breathes. Then, "Yeah. Let's do that. The sooner we can show Mr. Adams the act, the better. No misses."

"No misses," Santana repeats, knowing that Brittany means it. She gives Brittany's back another rub, proud of Brittany for wanting to try the act again, even though it so upset her to do it last time.

Her touch seems to embolden Brittany, who starts to sit up from against the cart. "All right," Brittany says, determination in her voice. "We need a plan so we don't get caught sneaking out of camp, darlin'."

* * *

><p>The girls spend the next quarter hour in conference, discussing how they'll steal through the camp to Brittany's tent to procure the throwing supplies. They draw out maps of the route they intend to take against the grass with their toes and decide that Santana will act as a guard outside the tent flap while Brittany fetches the gear.<p>

Once they have their things, they'll proceed directly to the woods, choosing a spot where they can still hear camp sounds but not see any part of the white city through the tree cover—that way, they'll be able to hear the lunch bell, but no one from the circus will glimpse them at their endeavors.

They plan to leave the woods around the time they start to get hungry—which should be just a few minutes before the mess bell actually sounds. However, should their stomachs fail to give them proper warning about the time, their location will still allow them to hear the bell toll and make it back to the mess with seconds to spare.

If worse comes worst, they can always leave the throwing supplies behind in the woods while they run along to lunch, and Brittany can retrieve the supplies later, after the warning bell rings for the morning fair. Her father never checks the gear before show time anyway.

The logistics of their plan decided, the girls consider what they'll say if someone should happen upon them while they're in transit with the board and knives—just cleaning off the apple stains and sharpening the blades before the show.

(One can't be too careful, after all.)

Thoroughly prepared to undertake their endeavor, Brittany gives Santana a nod, and they start off in the direction of the Pierce tent—though they only take a few steps before Brittany turns back to the cart.

Santana watches with curiosity as Brittany peels the advance article up from the flatbed and folds it, careful-handed, down to a three-inch square, which she then tucks under her sash as though it were a missive and she a messenger. Santana must meet Brittany with a shocked look because Brittany shrugs and explains her actions at once.

"Mr. Adams left it behind," Brittany says, as if the fact that he did so grants her permission to take the thing for herself. "If he wants it back, he'll have Ken threaten everyone, and I'll just slip it under the flap of his business tent while no one's looking. He won't even have to punish anyone for stealing it because he won't know who took it in the first place, and he'll have it returned to him as soon as he asks for it. It's better me taking it than someone who wouldn't know enough to get it back to Mr. Adams." Here Brittany flashes Santana her cat-smile, "Plus, I like the photograph."

(Santana can't help it if she can hardly argue with Brittany's logic.)

(Santana can't help it if her more-than-a-sweetheart is the cleverest person at the circus.)

* * *

><p>The girls resort to the Pierce tent by way of the billboard partition, following along it on the business side of the camp in-between the midway booths and the actual posters themselves so as to avoid happening upon any circus folks in transit. The billboards don't yet cast their full spectrum of color upon the earth, with the sun still low in the sky and it still early in the day, but they do turn Brittany's hair and Santana's blouse shades of blue and green and ruby red in passing, causing the girls to laugh at the strange beauty of the light's tricks.<p>

Neither one of them talks at all as they walk, for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Instead, they grin at each other and swing their hands between them, pleased with their own cunning and with everything, really.

They make it as far as the family tent row.

When they turn the corner, there she is—Ma Jones standing outside the Evans family tent, just across from Brittany's.

At first, Santana doesn't register who it is that she sees, for there's always a weirdness to happening upon a person in a place that the person doesn't usually frequent, like suddenly becoming aware of a dream. It especially throws Santana to take in Ma Jones' company—Sam's mother, Mrs. Evans, a slight woman whom Santana has often seen around camp but has never herself spoken to.

Mrs. Evans has hair as fair as Sam's, high cheekbones, and a kind face. She whispers something to Ma Jones, standing very close to her, almost but not exactly touching Ma's person. For her part, Ma appears very young, situated so close to a woman older than herself, and small and windless like at the general store at St. James. She folds her arms over her breast, clutching herself in close, and looks at Mrs. Evans with dark, sad eyes, following the way Mrs. Evans moves her mouth, hearing without understanding.

After a few seconds, Mrs. Evans seems to ask Ma Jones a question, meeting her eyes and addressing her very directly. Ma Jones nods her head yes, her lips pursed tight.

Just then, it occurs to Santana that this conference must be one of a very private sort, for fear shines from Ma Jones' countenance such as Santana has never seen in her before, even yesterday when Shane made his proposal to Ma in front of everyone. For her part, Mrs. Evans acts utterly concerned about these whole proceedings, repeating her question until Ma Jones nods again. Is Ma Jones about to cry?

To Santana's great surprise, Mrs. Evans then reaches out and sets her hand on Ma's elbow, comforting her.

Shock runs through Santana, of the same type she always feels whenever someone like Mrs. Evans shows human kindness toward someone like her. She gasps, in awe that Mrs. Evans would choose to break a rule, though Mrs. Evans is well-respected around the camp—and the preacher's wife, no less.

Santana's gasp isn't loud enough to attract any attention, and yet it escapes her lips at the exact moment that Ma Jones seems to sense her and Brittany's presence. Ma turns her head towards the disturbance, looking down the tent row.

When she sees Brittany and Santana, whatever tears she had in her eyes dry up in an instant.

"Brittany Pierce! Santana Puckerman! What y'all think you're doing, skulking about camp when there's work to be done?"

(It had been too long since Ma Jones had caught Santana unawares.)

* * *

><p>Brittany and Santana end up in the mess pit, conscripted into helping Ma Jones and her girls prepare a picnic lunch for Messrs. Adams and Fabray and their families. Ma Jones assigns Santana to stir batter for a pastry dessert and Brittany to assemble sandwiches with bread, mayonnaise, sardines from a can, and vegetable fixings.<p>

Though the girls had feared that their own jolly mood might somehow prove hurtful to Ma Jones if she were to spend time in their presence, Ma Jones actually pays very little attention to them altogether as they work. Instead, she bustles about her kitchen, critiquing her girls as they roll silverware into napkins for place settings and pack pickled beets, biscuits, boiled eggs, and quince preserves, one item atop the others, into the belly of a sizable splint basket.

Of course, even if Ma Jones were to pay them mind, Brittany and Santana don't feel much in a jolly mood anymore, for all of their elaborate planning has gone for naught and their good intentions to practice the knife throwing act have in fact amounted to nothing.

"I'm sorry, Britt," Santana says as she starts to pour her batter into a mold, as Ma Jones instructed.

Brittany shrugs. "It's not your fault. And we can always try again later," she says, though even as she speaks, Santana can't help but wonder when they'll ever find a better moment to sneak off into the woods together than the one Ma Jones just stole from them.

Once Santana finishes setting the batter into its mold, Ma Jones sets the dish on embers to cook and appoints Santana to grate cinnamon in the meanwhile. Grating cinnamon is an awful job, for it is hard on the elbows and often results in cut fingers. Santana flinches with each new scrape, and Brittany pouts at her, sympathetic to her trouble.

"Abuela never wanted me to grate cinnamon in her kitchen," Santana gripes, scraping another cinnamon stick down her shredder. "She thought that I might ruin something."

Brittany quirks an eyebrow. "Are spice graters made for right-handed people, too?" she asks.

Santana laughs. "Not for right-handed people—just grown women and not little girls with clumsy fingers, I don't think," she says.

Brittany slops mayonnaise onto a new slice of bread with the flat of her knife. "Did Abuela have a Spanish proverb about that?" she teases.

"Nope. She just said, _'¡Santana, no lo toques!'"_

"What's that mean?"

"It means 'Santana, don't you touch that.'"

Brittany smirks. "Were you always getting into things that you shouldn't, darlin'?"

At first, the question flusters Santana, but then she realizes that Brittany is still teasing her. "No," she protests, giggling. She tries to tease Brittany just a little bit in return. "I'll have you know that I was very well behaved until I met you, Brittany Pierce."

Brittany feigns disbelief. "You? I don't believe it for one second," she declares. At first, she wears a lopsided, careless kind of smile, but then it turns reverent. When next she speaks, her voice is much quieter. "I like learning new things about you."

Santana wants to reply with a quick "I love you," but she knows that she oughtn't to do so within earshot of Ma Jones and the kitchen staff. She grins at Brittany, adoring the girl who adores her boring old bachelor cottage stories. She wants to say something more, but can't think of what that something should be before Ma Jones happens by and she has to turn mum.

* * *

><p>Gradually, Santana and Brittany settle into a companionable silence, such as has been the working custom between them since the first occasion of their meeting. As they do so, Santana starts to observe Ma Jones, checking to see if whatever troubled Ma on the family tent row followed Ma back to the mess pit, too.<p>

Yesterday, it was easy to tell how much it gutted Sam to see his true love affianced to someone other than himself because his sunshine turned into the dreariest rain clouds.

Ma Jones isn't such an easy person read as Sam is, though.

Indeed, most persons might wonder if Ma Jones were actually heartbroken at all, considering the evenness of her expression and the regularity with which she attends her obligations in the kitchen. Santana might even be one of those persons herself, except that today she watches Ma very closely and for a long while, until she starts to notice a certain disposition in Ma—a particular rhythm, both familiar and strange to Santana, like something out of a waking dream.

Though Santana herself became prone to tears and miserable almost to the point of illness when she felt heartbroken thinking that Brittany could never return her love, she well knows that there are other kinds of heartbreak than just that kind in the world.

Some heartbreak is quiet, like Santana's father's. Some is sudden, like Sam's.

For Ma Jones, heartbreak seems to give chase like a hunting dog at her heels. She reacts to it by running ever faster, trying to do more and more to put it in the dust behind her. Most people would mistake Ma's reaction for her being a busybody or having no sense of humor, but Santana doesn't. She recognizes heartbreak in the snap of Ma's voice and can see it very plainly written into the way that Ma can't seem to allow herself to settle into any one place for too long or to enjoy any kind of peace.

That was how Santana got by in the first few days after Papa died, after all—always running along so as to keep from stopping, pretending to be sharp as tacks when really she felt soft and torn inside.

Santana knows that she and Ma Jones aren't truly friends and that even if they were friends she would still hardly have the right to say anything to Ma concerning Ma's present troubles. Even so, Santana can't help but wish that she could offer Ma some comfort or at least let her know that her heartbreak hasn't gone unnoticed by the whole world. Santana wishes she could tell Ma that someone else has seen her hurt and cares about it, even if that someone can do nothing to make it better.

When Brittany and Santana finish their respective tasks and Ma dismisses them to go wash the kitchen grime from their hands before lunch, Santana very nearly blurts out the words "I'm sorry" and only at the last instant prevents herself from doing so.

Ma Jones probably doesn't notice Santana almost saying something, but Brittany does, and she fixes Santana with an inquisitive look as they set off for the washtubs at the back of the chuck together.

"Santana—?" she starts.

She doesn't finish her question, mainly because she and Santana happen upon something just as they round the wagon: a single dried dandelion, crushed in the grass at their feet. An empty jam jar bobs, soaking in the washtub nearest it.

Without another word, Brittany reaches over and takes Santana's hand in hers. When the girls meet each other's eyes, they don't smile. Their shared look tells Santana that they both feel of two hearts at once again—grateful, on the one hand, to have what they do, but confounded, on the other, as to why they should have it when others can't and don't and when there are rules upon rules upon rules that should thwart it.

Brittany lifts Santana's hand to her mouth and gives Santana's knuckles a kiss before stooping down to retrieve the dandelion from the grass, tucking it into her sash along with Mr. Adams' article. When Santana flashes her a questioning look, Brittany bites her lip, apologetic.

"So Sam doesn't have to see it after lunch," she mumbles, and Santana nods in understanding.

(Sometimes it's not easier to go without the thing one wants even when one knows precisely why he can't have it.)

* * *

><p>It's not yet lunchtime when Brittany and Santana return to the mess after washing, so of course Ma Jones still has work for them to do before the bell rings.<p>

"Y'all take this to Mr. Adams at the business tent," Ma instructs, shoving the heavy splint basket into Santana's arms and handing Brittany two pitchers, one filled with coffee and the other with lemonade. "Don't dawdle, and don't make pests of your fool selves. If Mr. Adams says anything to either of you, you best reply _Yes, sir_ or _No, sir_, and nothing more or less than that, you hear? He has real business with Mr. Fabray today, and he don't need no troublemakers like you two hitching things for him in no way, you wise?"

"Yes, miss."

"Good," Ma says. "Now don't spill that coffee."

She sends Brittany and Santana away with a wave of her spoon, muttering to herself under her breath as they go that she hopes she won't live to regret sending "the two biggest fool girls that ever there was" to run her errands for her.

(Under the sharpness in her complaints, Santana just hears _soft_ and _torn_.)

Santana always feels nervous going to see Mr. Adams, like one of Mr. Malory's knights approaching a strange castle, and today she does more so than ever on account of Mr. Adams' perturbation concerning the advance article. With Ma Jones' stern warning still ringing in her ears, Santana can only hope that she won't do anything to trouble her employer or to upset anyone in his party by her presence.

As she and Brittany draw closer to their destination, Santana begins to hold her breath, as if waiting for someone to cinch a tight corset around her ribs, and decides on the spot to remain silent unless directly called upon to speak.

The Adams and Fabray families are already waiting for their lunch by the time Brittany and Santana arrive with it. They stand outside the business tent, flanked by Ken and the same manservant Santana saw pushing Arthur's chair the other day.

Messrs. Adams and Fabray smoke from their pipes, their free hands pushed into their pockets. Mr. Fabray mutters something to Mr. Adams, and Mr. Adams listens intently, more chewing on the end of his pipe than simply holding it in his mouth. Every few seconds, Mr. Adams nods and takes a hard puff of tobacco, saying something like "Of course, of course" or "Indeed, sir." Santana can't hear what Mr. Fabray tells him, but she supposes it must have to do with their business.

Arthur sits in his chair, dispassionately picking at the flannel blanket spread over his legs. Every now and again, he glances at his father, but Mr. Adams never returns his looks or even registers his presence at all. The manservant holds to the back of Arthur's chair, shading Arthur's neck from the sun with his own person.

Looking at the boy, it strikes Santana that Arthur seems as circus-lonely as everyone else in the white city, though he's the proprietor's son and has his name printed on the circus marquee.

Ken is off to the left of the manservant, as wretched as a dog that knows it has displeased its master. He glances every now and again at Mr. Adams, just as Arthur does, but he daren't get too close to the man. He holds his little bowler hat in his hands and mouths something to himself.

(Santana imagines it's Ken's version of an apology for calling Mr. Remington a "chucking cuss," or at least for doing so when Mr. Remington could hear him.)

Just beside Ken is Mrs. Fabray, fussing with Quinn's shirtsleeves, primping and fluffing where her daughter can't be bothered to do so.

Upon first glimpse, Quinn seems in a stoic or maybe even a stony mood, but a second glance reveals a subtle misery written into her disposition. Quinn's eyes, usually the clearest and most beautiful shade of hazel that Santana has ever seen, have turned pink and cloudy, and Quinn swallows heavily every few minutes, as if there were an obstruction lodged in her throat.

Though Quinn appears calm enough now, she obviously spent some time either last night or this morning weeping. She refuses to look at Arthur or at anyone around her, really. Even when Brittany and Santana arrive on scene, Quinn hardly seems to register their presence.

"What're you lot doing here?" Ken barks as soon as he sees Brittany and Santana coming down the lane. Then, "Give that to me!" he says, jamming his hat back on his head and marching over to wrest first the splint basket away from Santana and then the coffee and lemonade pitchers away from Brittany.

As soon as he has the whole picnic in his possession, Ken glances at Mr. Adams, searching for approval. Of course, Mr. Adams doesn't pay Ken the least bit of mind.

Rather, he checks his pocket watch. "What have we got today?" he asks absently.

It takes Santana a second to realize that he addresses her and Brittany. She looks to Brittany for help, aware of the rules.

Brittany offers Mr. Adams a smile. "Sardine sandwiches, beets, eggs, crackers, Ma's best biscuits, and cinnamon cake for dessert, with lemonade and coffee to wash it all down, sir," she says brightly.

Mr. Adams nods, too distracted to really show excitement for the spread. Santana feels a bit of relief, knowing that she and Brittany have just completed the hardest part of their errand. She starts to curtsy and back away from the business tent.

Except.

"We also have another delivery," Brittany says suddenly.

Santana's eyes aren't the only ones to widen at Brittany's word. Ken, too, looks shocked that Brittany would claim to have something else to distribute, as it's obvious that neither she nor Santana has any food or drink left in their possession. Ken stiffens where he stands, but he can't do much more than that, considering that he holds an entire summer picnic in his arms. Santana stiffens, too.

What is Brittany playing at?

"It's for Miss Lucy," Brittany says, stepping forward to where Quinn is.

Brittany's statement wins the attention of everyone present. The whole party looks to her, and no one more so than Quinn, who seems to notice Brittany's presence for the very first time since she and Santana appeared on the scene. All at once, Quinn stares at Brittany with an eagle perspicacity, quirking her head to one side and furrowing her brow, beyond interested in the strange girl, offering her she knows not what.

Brittany approaches Quinn in the same way one would approach a skittish bird as it hopped along the grass—slowly and with gentle movements. She wears her furrowed, really-seeing expression, perceiving parts of Quinn that Quinn probably doesn't realize she has on display.

Of course, Santana knows what it's like having Brittany take note of you when no one else has ever really done so before, so it doesn't surprise her when Quinn softens under Brittany's gaze and allows Brittany to come to within whispering distance of her.

Brittany acknowledges the new openness with a nod and reaches for the last remaining flower garland still slung at her wrist. A few of the petals have been crushed since the parade—likely in the closeness of Brittany's and Santana's embrace at the wagon bay—but the garland still looks just as sunny as Blaine had hoped it would be when first he envisioned it.

"Brave flowers for a brave girl," Brittany says quietly, extending the wreath to Quinn.

To Santana's surprise, Quinn actually offers up her wrist for Brittany to wrap the wreath around, meek. "Brave flowers?" she repeats, unused to Brittany's queer way of wording things.

Brittany nods. "It takes brave flowers to be such a bright yellow," she says matter-of-factly. She laces the garland over the curve of Quinn's wrist bones, retying a few of the stems that have fallen loose with quick and careful movements.

Though Santana is almost certain that Quinn still doesn't understand what Brittany means, Quinn laughs her wilted, hapless laugh and flashes Brittany the ghost of a smile.

"There," Brittany says, satisfied with her own work.

Brittany speaks in her kindest, sweetest voice, and Santana suddenly loves Brittany even just a little bit more for how gently she treats Quinn, despite the fact that Quinn has never acted especially friendly toward her on the few occasions when they've met before.

It occurs to Santana then that Brittany isn't just the girl who finds Santana, but the girl who can find anyone who needs finding, and that such is a great and rare dispensation in a world where people are generally indisposed to go looking for things that don't directly concern them.

For a few seconds, everyone remains silent, but then Mrs. Fabray prompts, "Lucy, thank the poor girl, for God's sake," and Quinn jogs back to a state of full awareness, broken from her reverie.

Quinn retracts her wrist from Brittany's touch, drawing it close to her own body and cradling it. "Thank you, Miss Pierce," she says, staring at Brittany like she can't figure out what Brittany's made of or where she came from.

"You're welcome," Brittany says back, completely guileless.

* * *

><p>Having made their delivery, Brittany and Santana set off back toward the mess pit, knowing that Ma Jones will undoubtedly want a full report on how Mr. Adams received his meal. The girls go along with linked pinky fingers, smiling at each other and feeling contented for their good work back at the business tent.<p>

They don't make it all the way to the mess before someone stops their progress, though.

"Miz Brittany, your daddy's looking for you!" a voice calls out.

Brittany and Santana halt where they stand, surprised to find themselves in the presence of one of Ma Jones' kitchen girls, and even more surprised, perhaps, to find the girl all by her lonesome. The girl sits on the edge of one of the washtubs scrubbing out the same dessert mold into which Santana poured the pastry batter earlier.

Her declaration catches both Brittany and Santana entirely unawares.

"He is?" Brittany asks, brow furrowing. She seems not to know what her father could want with her right before lunchtime.

The kitchen girl nods. "Mhm," she confirms. "He's been in your tent hollering for you something fierce for so long and so loud that lil' Miz Stacey Evans come over here to fetch you because her mama said that your daddy must need to see you real bad. Then Miz Jones told Miz Stacey Evans that she had sent you on an errand but that she would have you go to your daddy as soon as you got back from it."

The girl couldn't be smugger for delivering Ma's order. She smirks at Brittany and Santana, infinitely pleased with herself for having something important to tell them.

Santana can't say that she feels as thrilled as the girl does at the news.

Though Mr. Pierce is much less of a mystery to her now than he was when she first made Brittany's acquaintance, Santana still doesn't know that she altogether likes the way that the knife thrower treats his daughter or that she trusts him, even though Brittany seems to. The fact is that while Mr. Pierce will sometimes give his daughter a nickel for sarsaparilla, he'll also sometimes box her ear or frighten her, behavior which Santana simply cannot tolerate.

Something in the way the girl says Mr. Pierce has been hollering for Brittany puts a heaviness into the pit of Santana's belly.

Has he been hollering for his baby girl to come join him at some harmless task or hollering for Brittany because they have hard work to do together?

_("You know that!")_

When Santana glances at Brittany, she finds that she wears an unreadable expression, lips slightly parted but jaws tight. Brittany nods at the girl, thanking her for conveying Ma's orders, and then turns to Santana. "I've got to go," she whispers, her gaze flitting between Santana's eyes.

"Do you want me to wait outside the tent for you?" Santana asks, reluctant to part from Brittany even for the shortest while. She immediately dislikes how helpless she sounds, but of course Brittany doesn't seem to mind it.

Brittany smiles at Santana's offer, even as she laughs and shakes her head to decline. "You should probably go to lunch," she says gently.

Santana sighs. "I could save you a plate," she tries.

Brittany gives her finger a squeeze. "How about this? You take two biscuits, and if I'm not back by the time the fellas clear their first plates, you eat my biscuit, too?"

Really, Brittany oughtn't to be able to make Santana smile so widely even when Santana feels worried for her. Santana tells Brittany as much.

"Not Hugo, Brittany Pierce," she says softly.

Brittany smirks. "Am so," she says. Then, "I'll see you at the show, darlin'."

She gives Santana's finger another squeeze before releasing it and starts off in the direction of the family tent row. Santana watches her go until her shadow disappears around the corner, feeling nervous, on the one hand, for what Mr. Pierce might want with his daughter, and sweet on Brittany, on the other hand, for more reasons than she can count.

It's only when the lunch bell rings that Santana remembers the presence of the kitchen girl. When she turns around, she finds the girl watching her with dark, curious eyes.

"You best get on to lunch now, cookie. Don't wanna keep your mister waiting," the girl says, not unkindly but with a strange consultative tone to her voice.

Santana can only nod. "Right."

She wishes that the girl would stop staring at her as if she weren't real.

(Will she and Brittany ever find themselves alone together again?)

* * *

><p>Since her arrival at the circus, Santana has seldom taken a meal sans a companion, but today she does just that, with Brittany gone off to tend her father, Puck still away on his secret errands, Sam nowhere around, and Finn, Blaine, and Rory sitting in a little cluster with David and the other supe who harassed Santana on the train ride to Mankato, the lot of them oblivious to Santana's presence in the mess pit.<p>

Briefly, Santana considers going over to join Rachel Berry and her father where they eat, but then she thinks better of it, remembering that Rachel is likely still cross with her. Defeated, she fixes herself a small plate with two biscuits and takes a seat on the grass, away from everyone else, perching herself in a place where she could see Brittany's arrival in the mess pit, were it to actually happen.

It doesn't happen.

Brittany never turns up, but Puck does about midway through the meal. He arrives to the mess pit out-of-breath and so sweaty that his skin glints as if buffed. Secretly, Santana hopes that Puck won't see her or that he'll choose to eat with his friends, regardless. Unfortunately, Santana enjoys no such luck; Puck hails her almost right away.

"Hey, ladybird!" he calls, carrying his plate over to her spot of grass. "You saved me a biscuit?" As usual, he doesn't wait for Santana to reply to him—he flops down on the ground beside her, groaning and kicking out his legs. Heat radiates from his body in droves, and he smells like horse flesh and his usual musky herbs. "Oh, Jesus, it's hot!" he complains.

For a moment, Santana considers asking Puck where he's been for the last several hours and why he's left camp after the parade two days in a row now, but then she thinks better of doing so. After all, if Santana were to ask Puck about his day, then Puck might think to ask Santana about hers. Since Santana doesn't particularly care to explain to Puck that she spent her morning trading dizzying kisses with Brittany in the wagon bay, she decides to keep quiet.

She offers Puck what she hopes is a sympathetic look. "It's because we have black hair," she says simply, patting Puck on the wrist. "Black hair traps in sunlight. We're lucky our heads haven't baked yet in this Iowa heat."

Santana expects Puck to roll his eyes at her or to tell her that she sure must have baked her head if she thinks that his hair color has anything to do with why he feels hot, but he doesn't.

He smiles his idiot smile at her, impressed by her logic.

"Shucks, ladybird," he says, "you're probably onto something. You know, I haven't had my head shaved since your pa's funeral. My hair's much too long for July. What do you say you help me sheer it down after the matinee?"

His request takes Santana entirely by surprise.

As a child, Santana would often observe as Abuela trimmed Papa's hair in the kitchen at the bachelor cottage. Papa would sit on a pantry stool with newspaper spread out under it and Abuela would stand just behind him, tongue between her teeth as she measured out her work. Papa always wore his hair in a very smart cut and slicked it back with pomade. He preferred having Abuela cut it rather than a barber because he said she took more care in completing her task free of charge than a barber would even for a sizable tip.

He was probably right.

When Abuela died, Papa offered Santana the chance to take over Abuela's old job, and, though the prospect of being responsible for Papa's grooming did somewhat daunt her, Santana still felt honored to accept the position.

Of course, Santana had only to attempt the task once while using Abuela's right-handed sewing sheers before Papa determined that it would indeed be better for him to seek out a barber for himself after all.

_"Santana, my angel, don't cry. It's only a little cut. You see? It washes right away."_

_"But I hurt you, didn't I?"_

_"It's all right, Santana. I'm all right. You didn't hurt me. I'm fine."_

Fear must show in Santana's eyes for the memory because Puck frowns. "What's the matter, ladybird?" he asks, suddenly serious.

Santana sees no point in lying. "I'm not very handy with scissors—"

"You don't need scissors," Puck says quickly. "You can use my razor or even a kitchen knife, if it suits you. I like my hair shaved all the way down. Do you think you can handle that?"

Santana has never shaved a man's face before, so she wouldn't know if she were any good with a razor, and while she is fairly handy with a kitchen knife, she knows that peeling vegetables is a mite bit different than sheering a man's hair. The idea of holding a sharp edge so close to Puck's head frightens her. What if she were to really hurt him? Even if she doesn't like Puck much, she would hate to give him a bad cut or to nick his ear.

Puck senses Santana's apprehension and reaches out to touch her hand. "You don't have to do it if you don't want to, ladybird," he says. "I think I saw a barbershop on our way through town. I suppose could spare a dime or so to have my hair cut if doing it will help me beat this terrible heat. If you didn't feel up to—"

He speaks so earnestly about not forcing Santana to do something that she doesn't want to do that Santana can't help but take compassion on him.

"I could give it a try," she says abruptly.

Santana's offer clearly takes Puck aback. He blinks several times in succession, both surprised and impressed that Santana would choose to do something she considers uncomfortable for his sake.

"Are you sure?" he asks, searching Santana up and down. When she nods in confirmation, he grins, suddenly more boyish than idiot. "Look at you, trying something new, ladybird!" he says approvingly, chucking her on the knee.

In the next second, he shifts.

Santana only registers what's happening when it's too late for her to do anything about it: Puck uses his right hand to draw Santana's face down to his at the same time that he uses his left hand to prop himself up, rising to meet her.

"That's a good girl," he says, his jaw slackening and gaze fixing in on her face.

Puck lifts his chin, and Santana stiffens.

In the next second, everything happens both all at once and painfully slowly. Santana feels helpless to do anything for her situation, running up against that same old wall inside herself as ever until she's unable to move or even protest. Puck's smell overwhelms her, stronger and brighter than usual for his perspiration. Santana hates it and hates his damp shirt pressing up against her shirt. She hates that he's trying to kiss her in public. She hates that he's trying to kiss her at all.

(She only ever wants to kiss Brittany, not him.)

Though Puck kissed Santana on the neck after their quarrel in the tent the other night, Santana hasn't either kissed Puck on the lips or allowed him to kiss her on the lips since the day she first realized that she was in love with Brittany. Of course, Santana never much liked it when Puck kissed her before—like Brittany says, Puck kisses like a fish—but now that Santana and Brittany have both admitted to loving each other, Santana doesn't think that she'll be able to stand Puck's lips on hers, even if it's just for an instant.

She'll retch.

Puck draws so close that Santana can taste the hot tobacco stench of his mouth on her tongue and feel his whole body, hard and heavy, touching hers. She hasn't closed her eyes yet, but he has closed his. He tilts his head and urges Santana forward with his thumb.

She gives a sharp intake of breath and tenses, flinching.

That's all it takes to jar Puck.

His eyes flitter open and he draws back, suddenly running a hand over his own face, checking it. "Oh shit, ladybird!" he says. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to drip sweat on you or anything."

To Santana's great shock, he pulls entirely away from her, once again assuming a proper public distance. To her even greater shock, he actually blushes, embarrassed for his own impropriety. In the next second, he produces a pretty blue and white handkerchief from his pocket and begins to dab his face with it.

Santana would tell Puck that it's all right—that he didn't drip sweat on her—but she somehow can't bring herself to say aught to him now, as she's not entirely certain he won't try to kiss her again once he's wiped his face clean. She holds her breath and counts out one, two, three, four, five beats while Puck scrubs over his brow, cheeks, and chin, grumbling at himself.

Only when he returns his handkerchief to his pocket and finally reaches for his fork to begin eating does Santana allow herself to feel relieved.

(And to feel more relieved than she can say.)

If Puck should never try to kiss Santana again, it would still be too soon.

Santana doesn't want Puck's kisses and she doesn't want Puck. She just wants Brittany. She stares at the thread ring about her finger, heart beating so loudly in her chest that she feels certain that Puck must hear it.

Vaguely, Santana wonders what Brittany would have said if Brittany had seen Puck leaning in to kiss her. After all, Santana can only imagine how awful it would be to watch someone try to kiss Brittany. She feels a stab of shame that she didn't do more to evade Puck's advances. Part of her wishes that she had scratched Puck's face with her nails.

Of course, Puck seems not to realize that he's caused Santana any internal distress. He goes about eating his lunch, chattering on and on to Santana.

"The grub tastes better than usual today, don't it, ladybird? Being affianced must suit our Ma Jones rather nicely, huh? You mind if I take that second biscuit? I'm starved."

The more Puck jaws on at her, the more Santana longs for Brittany and watches in the direction of the chuck, hoping that Brittany will appear before the warning bell rings for the show. As the hour hastens on, Santana can't help but wonder why Mr. Pierce called his daughter back to their tent. Not knowing his reasons worries Santana very much.

(She strokes over the thread ring at her finger, anxious, anxious, anxious.)

* * *

><p>When the warning bell finally does ring for the show, Santana contents herself with the knowledge that she will soon see Brittany at the matinee. Puck busses his and Santana's plates, and they walk back to their tent together to gather up their things for the morning fair. As they go, Santana frets that Puck might try to kiss her goodbye once they reach the midway and so makes a point to walk far ahead of him, ducking into her gazebo before he can have any clever ideas.<p>

By now, Puck isn't the only one to have reason to complain about the heat; the temperature has risen by the hour, and the afternoon air positively swelters. Patrons arrive to the midway bearing little fans in hand, the men rolling their shirtsleeves and the ladies hating their petticoats. Unlike yesterday, Ken sticks close to Santana's gazebo throughout the whole fair, maintaining watch over her interactions with their customers.

Santana's initial readings prove uneventful: for the first, she tells a farmer that he would be wise to set aside some of his highest quality seeds from this year's crops to plant next year, if he would like to increase his future yields, and, for the second, she advises a rather giggly woman to seek out happy music to keep her good mood alive. Santana hopes that her third reading will be equally easy for her.

Of course, it isn't.

Five young men in boater hats and waistcoats appear before her table. None of them looks older than thirty years of age, and all of them seem very jolly, laughing and ribbing at one another. The foremost amongst them wears a green and yellow pinstriped vest and a green bowtie. He keeps his hands jammed in his pockets and smirks at Santana when he looks at her.

"Hello," he says. "We're students from the Keokuk Medical College, and we were wondering if you might perhaps be willing to help us settle a small, ah, scientific debate between us, Madame?

You see, my colleagues and I have studied somewhat concerning your profession of chirology, and while I myself am of the opinion that it is a most scientific and quantifiable endeavor, my friends here seem to think that it is—and you must pardon my frankness, for I don't mean to be vulgar—a rather fraudulent pursuit with no basis in the principles of physiology or in human anatomy at all.

In order to resolve our differences, we've determined that if I were to apply some scientific principles to construe a palm reading of my own and do so to the satisfaction of a professional such as yourself, it might satisfy my fellows that palmistry had some scientific basis. All we ask is that you, dear girl, allow me to practice my reading on your palm and then that you judge for your own self whether I have done so well. If my reading proves accurate according to your estimations, then my friends will have to agree that chirology is a valid scientific process, will they not?

So what do you say, Madame? Would you be willing to help us in the name of science?"

It's a very strange appeal and one that doesn't altogether sit well with Santana, who herself knows next to nothing concerning traditional palmistry. Will this medical student be able to discern her fraud if she acquiesces to his request?

Her hesitation must show on her face, for, in the next second, the medical student seems to realize that Santana will need some incentive to help him. He produces a two dollar bill from the pocket of his striped waistcoat.

The bill appears tattered but absolutely legal. It bears an image of General McPherson, who was killed in the Battle of Atlanta, with the large red seal of the U.S. Department of Treasury right beside his portrait.

Even though Santana acquired a bill twenty-five times more valuable than the one the medical student offers her now only just yesterday, she still can't help but gape a bit at the prospect of coming into more money—and especially so soon. She had never imagined herself making tips, after all.

"I promise to only take few moments of your time," the medical student says, setting the bill down in front of Santana on the table. "And I will compensate you for your troubles, of course."

If Santana weren't already tempted to accept the bill on her own behalf, Ken's animated gesticulations to her from over her patron's shoulder would otherwise convince her that she had no choice but to agree to her patron's proposed terms.

She glances from Ken's blotchy face to the money on the table.

"All right, sir," she says, wearing her grandmother's accent.

She extends her hand to the medical student, who positively beams for her cooperation.

The medical student nods at Santana and receives her hand with both of his own. In the next second, he sits down and begins to pour over the features of her palm, observing its anatomy as if he were checking it for injury or defect.

His manner isn't unfamiliar to Santana, for she finds that the medical student behaves in much the same way that her father used to whenever he had reason make an examination of her when she was a child—which is to say with thoroughness and clinical precision but also an air of human warmth.

In fact, the medical student and his friends rather remind Santana of her father and his colleagues from Bellevue.

While Santana was growing up, her father would invite his doctor friends over to the bachelor cottage to make merry with him with some regularity. The men would gather around the piano in the parlor and drink until they felt bold enough to sing. While the men socialized, Abuela would serve them jelly rolls and sweet pickles and refill their glasses with Papa's fine liquors. The men would stay up long into the night, well past Santana's bedtime, swapping stories about their work and reminiscing over their college days.

Santana wasn't allowed to touch Papa or to speak to him while his friends were in the house—_¡No lo molestes, querida!_—but once or twice he did invite her down into the parlor to sing for everyone as if she were giving a recital. Santana remembers how her father's eyes welled with tears as he shook his brandy in her direction.

_"Isn't she just—? Well, isn't she—?"_ he said, a tightness in his throat that Santana didn't often hear.

Looking back, Santana knows that her father could have chosen to host his stag parties wherever he liked—at the Grolier Club or his own apartment on East 32nd Street, say—but that he preferred to stage them at the bachelor cottage because some secret part of him had hoped that someone might notice how very special his hidden things were, even if he could do nothing to unhide them.

Santana allows herself to carry away so deeply into memory that it jolts her when the medical student finally speaks.

"Very well, gentlemen," says the medical student, and his friends immediately gather around him, as though they were attending a gross clinic in one of Mr. Eakins' paintings.

The crowd outside Santana's booth titters with excitement, and Santana herself feels both nervous and thrilled, wondering what the medical student will have to say about her. The medical student clears his throat.

"Here we see our subject's lifeline," he announces, tracing over the crease that runs along the bulb of Santana's thumb, "and here the heart line," and he traces again, this time over the suture at the top of Santana's palm just below her fingers. "Note the abruptness of the first line and the acute pronunciation of the second."

"Noted," says one of the student's companions, and the others laugh, amused with the mock formality of the proceedings.

The medical student giving the reading ignores the laughter and carries on straight-faced.

"Now, the lifeline is the _cursus vitae_ and shows the vitality of the specimen. The heart line is tied to the powers of Venus and shows inclinations towards romance and attraction."

Here, Santana begins to panic. She dislikes how the medical student talks.

(She dislikes him rifling through what should be her secret things—)

A malevolent look starts to spread over the student's features. His smile turns from a genuine one to something meaner. He continues his tour of Santana's hand: "As you can see from the shortness of the first line and the marked articulation of the second, we have ourselves here a modern day Juliet, who will love truly but die young."

Santana doesn't mean to do it, of course, but at the medical student's word, she flinches and attempts to pull her hand away from him.

His grip is too strong for her, though.

He grabs on more tightly to her hand with both of his and holds her firmly in place, though she balks at him. Before she can say anything to protest it, he goes on with his reading, talking in a very loud voice, to the amusement of his friends and the intrigue of the larger crowd.

"Of course, there is a medical explanation for this diagnosis, gentlemen. We know that this woman leads an itinerant lifestyle and is likely subject to such deprivations as are natural to her peripatetic state. Malnutrition, the dangers of live performance, and poor hygiene will all contribute to her premature expiration."

Judging by the way that the medical student smirks at her, he doesn't seem to think that Santana will understand what it is he's just said concerning her character, but she does. His words cut her.

She isn't a vagrant, for God's sake.

Ken still stands just behind the student's companions, and Santana looks to him for help. He once stopped a handful of teenage boys from harassing Santana in St. James, after all. Won't he do anything to intervene now?

He doesn't.

He only watches, agog and useless, too flabbergasted to speak, fear behind his beady eyes as the medical student continues to impugn Santana's honor and say the most terrible things about her.

"What about that true love?" someone calls from the crowd.

The medical student sneers. "We know from Dr. Morton and the modern anthropologists that specimens from her race often exhibit nymphomanical traits, which is to say that it shouldn't surprise me if our fortuneteller here were to take many lovers throughout her brief life. Venus rules her, after all. Of course, the clap won't do anything to extend her life, either, and—"

Hearing the student say such a vulgar thing about her to a crowd gives Santana the burst of strength she needs to wrench her arm from his grasp. She twists away from him and stands up out of her chair, as rushed and agitated as one of Jesse St. James' lions at the sound of the tamer's whip.

The suddenness of her motion causes the crowd around her booth to recoil and some to shout. The medical student and his friends all start.

"Madame, I haven't finished with my reading yet!" the medical student cries, genuinely incensed that Santana would thwart him. He gestures furiously to the two dollar bill on the table. "If you want your reward—!"

"I don't want it! Not from you!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, you can't have it!"

The medical student couldn't look more surprised if touching Santana's palm were to have scalded him. He stands up from the table, outraged. When he spots Ken hovering behind him, seems to expect that Ken will intervene and reprimand Santana for the disrespect.

Ken doesn't.

Ken stands firm, looking between the medical students and Santana. His face isn't purple, and his hands hang limp at his sides. He seems surprisingly calm, considering that Santana just ruined the morning fair on a day when Mr. Adams said that the circus couldn't afford to have anything go wrong.

_Oh God._

Santana's just done everything wrong.

Her pulse pounds in her ears, and she watches, dizzy, as the medical student snatches up his bill from the table and gestures for his friends to follow him away. He is gone in a trice, cutting through the crowd like a saber.

Santana faces Ken. "I'm sorry," she babbles. "I insulted him and forgot my accent, and now he's cross, and Mr. Adams said he didn't want any foul ups today, and I've already fouled up everything before the show's even begun and—"

Ken gives his head one sharp shake in Santana's direction, cutting her off before she says anything more. When he meets her eyes, his meaning couldn't be clearer.

_If you don't say it, it didn't happen._

Santana shuts up immediately.

Ken turns to the throng outside Santana's booth. "The J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie is proud to purvey only the most upstanding and high quality entertainment of a most wholesome sort to the people of Dyersville!" he calls out over the excited chatter. "We don't abide hoodlums on this midway anymore than we do in our shows! No vulgar talk here, folks! Nothing to see!"

(For the first time since she arrived at the circus, it occurs to Santana that Ken might actually be good at his job.)

* * *

><p>The show bell rings not one minute after Ken makes his announcement, and, when it does so, the crowd around Santana's booth immediately begins to disperse. Santana waits to feel better, watching her patrons go away. She waits to feel less cornered, less foolish, less mocked. If she could only breathe, she'd be all right, she knows. She tries to busy her hands, worrying them together.<p>

(She waits, she waits, she waits.)

But though Santana endeavors to soothe herself, she finds that she can't do so. The medical student's "reading" replays again and again through her mind, accusing her of things she would never do, predicting an outcome for her that she can hardly stand to think about.

Santana hates the medical student for saying such awful things about her, and especially to such a wide audience as the one that had gathered around her gazebo. She also hates that she can never seem to speak up at the right times—that she always defends herself either not at all or too late to do good for anyone. Belated tears start to sting at her eyes, and all of a sudden she hurts inside, as if something had scraped out the hollow of her ribcage.

A physician is supposed to do no harm.

_("That's not a princess, honey. That's a gypsy.")_

Ken waits until the last of Santana's patrons have quit the premises before he comes over to Santana's table, standing just in front of her. He fixes Santana with a serious look but doesn't curse at her.

"We don't shout at patrons," he says gravely.

He seems to want to remind himself of this fact as much as he wants to remind Santana of it.

Just then, Santana remembers what Mr. Remington's article said about Ken, and she wonders if it isn't true. She remembers her first day performing on the midway, when Puck stared Ken down until Ken shirked. Do the rules place Puck higher up than Ken? Is Ken really almost just as lowly as Santana?

It occurs to Santana that even after eleven days at the circus, she's never yet learned Ken's surname, though he seems like a person who should go by his surname, considering his position. Is Ken's surname like Santana's, then? Is it one that would give him away for what he is?

(Give him away as different?)

Santana studies the hardness of Ken's features and the tightness in his jaw. She perceives in his bearing a particular discomfort of being, an uneasiness in his own skin. It strikes her as familiar. She recalls the mirror in St. James. She recalls her time in the Tenderloin district. All at once, for the first time since she met him, Santana begins to feel a bit sorry for Ken, for though she knows what it is to feel ashamed of oneself and to realize that others will hate her for her birth, she's never yet known such self-hatred as he has.

(She remembers the frontier sketch in Ackley and blanches.)

* * *

><p>Santana all but runs to the backstage area and puts herself at the front of the line to enter the big top for the knight sketch, set on a reunion with Brittany. Though only a few hours have elapsed since last she and Brittany parted ways, Santana almost aches, starved for Brittany's company.<p>

While the more logical part of Santana knows that no spell or talisman exists that could help ward off what the medical student said about her, her heart has convinced her that just seeing Brittany—that just feeling Brittany's touch—will be enough to undo whatever damage the medical student has done to her and to prove him wrong once and for all.

(Santana has but one true love and wouldn't want another.)

(She and Brittany are young and well and happier than the medical student could possibly understand.)

When Ken finally draws back the flaps to the big top, something loosens inside Santana and the calm she had hoped for before finds her. She can finally breathe. She can finally be. When she spies Brittany waiting for her at the heart of the ring, she very nearly flies to Brittany's side and doesn't refrain from throwing her arms around Brittany's waist in an embrace.

She buries her face in Brittany's hair, breathing in the windy, wonderful Brittany scent at the back of Brittany's neck. She doesn't linger—just squeezes Brittany once, enough to know that Brittany is there and well and hers.

"Don't ever leave me again," she says, only partly joking.

Brittany sighs and spins Santana around to face her just as the music starts. "You couldn't have missed me half as much as I missed you," she says, swinging her and Santana's hands out wide to the side of them.

Though Santana hates to do it, she can't help but check over Brittany on impulse, searching her for injuries. When she finds none—no boxed ears, no new scrapes—the last strained cord inside her eases.

Mr. Pierce didn't do harm by his daughter.

Brittany is all right.

Though it's probably silly of her to feel so relieved and overjoyed about being back in Brittany's presence when she and Brittany have only been apart for just a short time, Santana doesn't care; she can be silly around Brittany, and it doesn't matter because Brittany never faults her for it.

Santana grins, and Brittany grins at her in return. She takes a step forward just as Brittany gestures for her to come in close.

With the band already in lively form, the girls dance in circles around the center of the ring, allowing the music to catch them up. They nearly bump into Rachel Berry, who spares them a scathing look for their carelessness, and laugh so loudly at each other that it wouldn't surprise Santana if the audience could hear them over the song.

When the knights rush out, Santana hides at Brittany's shoulder, sneaking a kiss against Brittany's skin, her own hair and Brittany's shrouding her face. When the maids all go to give their flowers to the men, Santana and Brittany seek out Puck and Sam right alongside each other and present their blooms to the boys in turn.

"Do you really have to go back to your backstage?" Santana complains as she and Brittany and Puck and Sam all exit the big top together.

Brittany shrugs. "I have to go have my bath day," she says, scrunching up her nose not at the prospect of bathing but rather at the prospect of having to part from Santana again.

"During the show?" Santana asks, shocked.

Brittany nods. "Saves time," she says, shrugging. "The knife throwing act isn't until close to the end of things anyway."

"You're so smart, Britt," Santana says, and Brittany beams as she makes her exit, wandering off in the direction of the dressing tents.

Only with Brittany gone does Santana start to pay attention to the matinee again, and, when she does so, it surprises her to hear a familiar but unexpected voice booming from the big top.

"Ladies and gentleman, children young and old, welcome to the most magnificent spectacle between this nation's two fair oceans! You've read my name on the marquee. That's right—I'm Mr. J.P. Adams and this is my circus! Welcome to our show today. It's my pleasure to purvey to you the most high quality entertainment available on this continent. I'm very pleased to introduce the very best artists in the world, who've come to amuse you with their antics, pluck, charisma, and even their willingness to defy death! You'll see both man and beast perform feats of strength, skill, and pageantry! Please do make yourselves comfortable. And now on with the circus!"

In all of the excitement following last night's show, Santana had forgotten about Will's suspension. She had also forgotten that he would have a replacement during today's performances.

Curious upon curious, Santana looks to Puck, asking his silent permission to go over to the aperture at the back of the tent. When Puck grants Santana leave with a nod, she hurries to her usual place and pokes her head through the tent flap, gazing out just in time to see Mr. Adams gesturing to the trapeze with his cane.

Mr. Adams wears his magnificent red topcoat and a stovepipe hat and seems perhaps more regal than ever. Though his stature is small, he somehow appears to fill the ring, bigger than himself and almost dazzling in his own right.

"Kindly direct your attention to the high wire to witness the intrepid aerial experimentation of the Flying Dragon Changs of Peking, the most skillful equilibrists and trapeze artistes of the Orient, who will astound you as they defy the very principles of physics!" he roars, smiling as the spotlight shifts from himself to the Changs high on their perches.

Whereas Will typically seems rather listless and almost bored at his job, Mr. Adams speaks with such contagious excitement that even Santana, who has watched the Flying Dragon Changs perform at least twenty times since her arrival at the circus, feels a thrill for it, as though the act were brand new.

As the Changs begin their tumbling, Mr. Adams recedes into shadow, observing them from the floor. How many times has he watched the circus in his lifetime, Santana wonders? Does it still thrill him to take in performances like it does her?

(Even if Santana were to travel with the circus for a thousand years, she doesn't think she would ever tire of seeing it.)

Santana stands transfixed at the back of the big top, watching as Mr. Adams introduces act after act. Not only is his enthusiasm for the circus much greater than Will's, but his whole manner of performance differs from Will's, as well.

Mr. Adams chats with the crowd and drawls to them, making note of their applause when they give it and chiding them when they laugh at him, though inevitably with a smile. He always seems to have some trick as he talks up each successive act. At one point, he balances his cane on the tip of his finger. At another, he climbs up along the edge of the ring, walking it as though it were a tightrope.

When the clowns bustle onto the stage to steal his hat away from him, Mr. Adams catches them in the act, turning around with a great and exaggerated "Aha!" so loud that it reverberates all the way around the big top.

Mr. Evans—who had been just about to pluck the hat from Mr. Adams' head—leaps backwards at the sound, jumping up into Sam's arms for fright. Since Sam is hardly prepared to catch such a heavy load, he ends up staggering into the clown just behind him, who turns out to be David, the big fellow usually responsible for abducting Rachel during the Little Malibran sketch. David blunders into Blaine and Blaine into Rory. Soon all the clowns are falling down like dominoes, at first in genuine but then as a gag.

"Serves you right, trying to make me look foolish in front of these good folks!" Mr. Adams crows.

He waits until Mr. Evans leaps down from Sam's arms to give Mr. Evans a sharp rap on the oversized clown shoe with his cane.

Mr. Evans plays off the motion, tripping back into Sam again, clutching his toe and howling for his hurt, and soon the whole gag starts over, with Sam stumbling into David and David into Blaine and Blaine into Rory until the whole audience is in stitches for the folly of it all.

Santana has never laughed so hard at the clown sketch as she does when Mr. Adams begins to chase Mr. Evans around the ring, brandishing his cane as though it were a sword. Mr. Evans jumps into Sam's arms again, and then Sam starts to run, holding Mr. Evans as if he were a very large baby, Mr. Adams still in fleet pursuit. In the meantime, all the other clowns stand about in a dither, chewing their nails and ringing their hats, not sure where to go or what to do.

It takes ten minutes for Mr. Adams to clear all the clowns from the stage. He gives the last one to go—Rory—a sharp smack on the seat of his pants with his cane and then cheers for himself, triumphant.

"Huzzah! That will teach those meddling scoundrels a lesson or two, won't it?" he says, his eyes disappearing as his cheeks lift into his jocund grin.

The audience cheers for his bravery and Santana does, too.

It occurs to Santana that Mr. Adams certainly doesn't act like a man who lost nearly $2000 to accidental expenses last night. He also doesn't act like a man being blackmailed or like one on the brink of losing his livelihood. Rather, he acts like a man doing something he loves and being somewhere that suits him, to the point where Santana has to wonder why he isn't always the ringmaster—why he bothers with Will at all.

Mr. Adams announces the Most Elite and Accomplished Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie of St. Petersburg, complimenting the women for their beauty and informing the crowd that the women's horses come from an unbroken line of the finest pedigree Russian Tersks. He speaks of how the Coterie learned riding from their Cossack ancestors and puts on a most impressive Russian accent to welcome them to the stage.

There's almost as much performance in him as there is in the riding of the Coterie, and Santana marvels that someone as important and successful as Mr. Adams could be so playful—that he could love the circus so much.

After the Coterie finishes their ride, Mr. Adams remains on stage for the lion act, passing his hat off to the shaggy-haired band maestro before acting as a human prop under the direction of Jesse St. James.

When Jesse pries open the jaws of the big, male lion, Mr. Adams fearlessly inserts his head between the lion's fangs, standing at a cocked angle and mugging for the audience. He remarks that the lion's red gums match the color of his jacket and also that he believes he may have discovered his lost pocket watch in the depths of the lion's throat. Everyone laughs heartily, and even Jesse gives a real smile as opposed to his usual sneer.

When the jugglers come on, Mr. Adams calls for Kurt to pass him a few clubs for his own and then deftly manages to keep them in the air, all on a cycle, balancing his cane on the toe of his shoe at the very same time that he lobs his targets, one after another.

Only as Santana watches Mr. Adams make way for the contortionists to snake into the ring does it strike her: on her very first day at the circus, she gave Mr. Adams a palm reading, though she hardly knew him at all at the time. She remembers what she told him just before he cut her reading short.

_"You have a hidden passion."_

(Now she has to wonder: what does it mean when a sham of a fortuneteller tells her fortunes true?)

* * *

><p>Since joining the circus, Santana has learned many truisms regarding show business but none more appropriate to this evening's particular performance than this one: namely, that one person's exceptional performance during a show can elevate the performances of everyone around him.<p>

It was true yesterday of Sam's sad, brilliant clowning, and it's true today of Mr. Adams' grand, wholehearted pageantry. Everyone seems so on-point for his candor. No one misses a cue, no one missteps, and every performer executes his or her act with an especial degree of deftness.

Even Santana feels personally bolstered by Mr. Adams' fine performance, waxing bold enough to add a flare to her dance, tossing her tambourine into the air on an off-beat in the music.

Red light from Puck's staff glints against the tin discs of the instrument for the half-second during which it hovers suspended above Santana's head. When it returns to Santana's hand, she immediately strikes it against the curve of her hip, punctuating the next note of the song with a tinkering flurry. The audience cheers so boisterously for her flourish that both Puck and Rachel offer her approving looks, impressed by her showmanship.

At the end of the gypsy act, Santana rushes back to her place at the aperture of the tent, not wanting to miss one moment of Mr. Adams' conduct. She watches him tease Rachel for the Little Malibran sketch, inviting his "most talented young ingénue" to sing to the crowd. He plays his role perfectly, engaging Rachel's comedy with a graceful, jocular repartee of his own.

(It's easy to see why Puck, a boy who loves the circus, should also love Mr. Adams so very much.)

Mr. Adams' antics distract Santana to the point that it somehow surprises her when it comes time for the knife throwing act and the Pierces arrive on stage. For a few moments, Santana had forgotten that there could be anything dangerous in the world.

But.

There's something wrong, and Santana senses it from the start.

It's in the way Mr. Pierce moves.

When Santana watched her first circus performance, she noted Mr. Pierce's burdened gait, but today she sees something more than just the regular encumbrance on his motion.

She sees pain, too.

Mr. Pierce clearly favors his right foot while nursing his left. He scarcely puts any weight on what must be his injury and winces at each new step. Brittany helps him to move along, allowing him to lean on her, even though she also carries their satchel full of gear. Mr. Pierce grimaces more than usual and bites down on his lip every time he feels pressure. His left moccasin wears unevenly; Santana wonders if it doesn't conceal a thick bandage or poultice around the arch of his foot.

Of course, Mr. Adams says nothing concerning Mr. Pierce's injury in his introduction to the act, and nothing changes in the way that Brittany and Mr. Pierce execute their set up. The supes bring the board to the center of the stage, Brittany puts the satchel into place, and Mr. Adams counts out ten paces for Mr. Pierce, who limps to his appointed position.

Santana knows that knife throwing requires a certain degree of athleticism—she saw that when she stood before the board in the woods and watched Brittany at her art. The thrower must possess strength, balance, and coordination. The thrower must be sure and stable. The thrower must be poised.

A knot forms in the pit of Santana's belly.

It redoubles on itself.

(Mr. Pierce is a ragged man falling apart at his seams.)

"... six, seven, eight, nine, ten! Hooray! There we have it!" Mr. Adams cheers as Mr. Pierce comes to a halt, straightening up to face the board.

Santana watches Mr. Pierce meet Brittany's eyes from across the way. She searches for certainty in their look, for trust, steadiness, and the passionate desire to do no harm. She can't see the colors or details from such a distance, but she imagines blue meeting blue, browbeaten meeting beautiful.

_(You ready, baby girl?)_

_(Sure, I'm ready, Daddy.)_

Brittany nods her head and raises her hand. Mr. Pierce inhales. In the next instant, Mr. Pierce lunges forward from his right foot to his left with a mighty flinch and a throw.

Santana imagines the moment as if she stood in Brittany's place; she sees Mr. Pierce's pupils expand to fill his eyes, she intakes a sharp breath, she braces for the impact just a hairline second before it happens.

She waits for pain.

But the knife hits true.

It drives deep into the wooden board but doesn't touch Brittany at all, hitting somewhat farther away from Brittany than it usually might. Better there than anywhere else, Santana supposes, but still. She only just has time to acknowledge that Brittany is safe before Mr. Pierce throws again.

This time, Santana watches his form. She watches how he keeps his weight on his back foot and juts his hips but doesn't step forward. He's shifting, making adjustments to the act for his injury, probably without even thinking about it. The throw comes more from his shoulders than from the rest of his body, but he's strong enough to make it connect.

Another clean throw.

Santana watches Brittany and wonders how Brittany must feel, standing before the board for her father, who can scarcely see her or stand on his own two feet. Santana almost feels Brittany's pulse in her own skin—what must be the hard, hot, fast of it. She barely breathes her own breath. When Mr. Pierce raises his arm to lob another throw, Santana's muscles tense at her back, and she's there before the board with Brittany.

She doesn't dare blink.

Santana waits until the third throw hits true to make her move: in the split second before Mr. Pierce lunges again, she takes three long strides from the aperture of the tent to the inside of the big top and stops just at the border between deep shadow and shadow, still under shade and invisible to the audience, but on the brink of where Brittany might see her, if Brittany were to turn her head.

Brittany doesn't turn her head.

(Santana is glad that she doesn't.)

Brittany stands statue still for another throw and doesn't twitch as the knife drives deep into the wood at her side, slicing deep enough to poke through the back of the target with a single cuspid tooth.

Without thinking about it, Santana lowers to her knees, crouching and creeping just a bit closer to the line of darkness which separates her from the limelight in the ring. She wants to see Brittany's eyes. She wants to see if Brittany holds her father's gaze.

Another throw.

Five knives frame Brittany at Vitruvian points. Santana inches forward along the floor, searching for that exact place where the shade will lift from her vision, changed into light. She still doesn't dare blink and hardly breathes.

The sixth throw lands.

It's wide but clean. Something in Santana's belly unravels—one knot out of two, at least. She lifts a hand to her breast and feels a scurrying beat beneath her skin.

It takes a full minute for Brittany to travel from the board to her father and back to the board again, retrieving the bandolier at midpoint. It takes another minute for Brittany to dislodge all six of her father's knives from the backboard and sheath them in their leather casings. Thirty more seconds elapse after that before Brittany returns the restocked bandolier to her father. Santana waits all the while, barely breathing, until Brittany scampers over to the satchel, laid out on the ground.

Only then does Santana move, emerging just enough from shadow to straddle light and darkness, concealment and visibility. Brittany stoops just ten paces from her, collecting the apple for the second half of the act. Santana's motion catches her eye immediately, and Brittany starts just a bit because of it.

Brittany recognizes Santana quickly enough, and, when she does so, her shocked look changes to a curious one. She seems surprised to find Santana so close to her, though not at all displeased. Her pretty cat-eyes light like sunrise over the sea, and her primrose lips curl in a wise, happy way.

_("Fancy seeing you here, darlin'.")_

The girls can't speak to each other—not without alerting Brittany's father and Mr. Adams to the fact that Santana sneaked into the big top through the back of the tent—but it doesn't much matter.

Santana finds the deepest part of Brittany's eyes—the black quick against the blue—and asks a question without words. Brittany answers back with a single, sure nod.

_Are you all right?_

_I'm all right._

Of course, Brittany can't promise Santana that her father will aim true—not with any real certainty, not in a way that matters—and she can't know the future any more than Santana can, never mind palms or cards or the sign outside Santana's gazebo announcing her prowess as a fortuneteller. All the same, Santana takes comfort from knowing that Brittany feels sure enough of her father's ability to stand before the board for him, unafraid.

_I love you_, Santana mouths out.

_I love you, too_, Brittany mouths back.

Santana doesn't bother to step back into the darkness, even after Brittany returns to the board, apple in hand. She can't force herself away from the light—away from her girl in promise white. Instead, she lingers just between the back and foreground, hanging where Brittany will know to find her, should Brittany need that, need her. She holds her breath and braces for the count.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

_Four._

_Five._

_Six._

Safe.

* * *

><p>Mr. Adams wants a perfect show, and he gets his wish.<p>

Mr. Pierce aims true—if wide—throughout the whole knife throwing act, much to the delight of the crowd. The audience cheers for the Pierces, and Brittany helps her father to take his bow, standing under his arm and carrying his weight across her shoulders, supporting him as he limps off stage.

Afterwards, Mr. Adams summons the elephants to the rings, and they perform as well as if they understood human speech, heeding commands from their trainers with perfect obedience. The grand exit parade passes in a blur of color and music, and the audience applauds so loudly for the whole show that Santana can feel the reverberations of their ovation through her breastbone and temples. The sound is deafening.

Santana finishes the show consumed with more questions than she can count, all of them having to do with the Pierces.

Had Mr. Pierce already hurt himself when he started hollering for Brittany to return to their tent this morning? Is that why he needed her help? Or did something happen to Mr. Pierce after Brittany answered his calls? What caused him harm? Will he be all right? Should Mr. Adams hire a doctor for him? Does his injury have something to do with his blindness? Is it something that will heal? Is Brittany all right?

(If Santana's father were present, he could treat Mr. Pierce in a jiff.)

Santana wishes that she could run over to Brittany's backstage area. She wishes that she could ask Brittany to explain what happened after their goodbye behind the chuck wagon. She wishes that she could hold Brittany and kiss Brittany's hair and tell Brittany that she was so brilliant and brave, going through the act for her injured father.

Santana seldom gets to do as she wishes, though.

Puck shoulders the gypsy gear and stands to his full height at Santana's side, squinting against the sunlight. "Good show, ladybird," he commends. "Now what do you say about that haircut?"

Santana had forgotten her promise.

(Somehow, with Puck, she always does.)

* * *

><p>Somehow Santana hadn't expected that she would give Puck his haircut along the middle of their tent row, in broad daylight, where anyone could see them.<p>

"Puck," she objects, "isn't this just a bit—?"

She wants to say _vulgar_ or _improper_ or even _unsanitary_, but somehow she can't settle on how to phrase her complaint in a way that would both make sense to Puck and spare his feelings.

(She just thinks it's a bit ghastly for her to put her hands on his scalp where someone might see her doing it, that's all.)

Puck smiles his idiot smile, his tongue poking from between his lips as he shuttles first the oak stool and then the steel washbasin on its overturned vegetable crate from the inside of his and Santana's tent to the outside, forming a makeshift "barbershop" on the grass.

"Don't worry, ladybird. I'll walk you through it," he assures her.

He seems to forget that his last attempt to teach Santana a new skill ended with them in a screaming match and the whole camp aware of their business.

(Then again, when it comes to Santana, Puck has always picked and chosen what he would remember and forget, based on what suits him.)

Once Puck has the "barbershop" aligned all to his liking, he sets about preparing his shaving kit for use. He sharpens the blade of his straight razor against a small, dark whetstone and strops the blade along a leather strip, turning it over expertly in his hand following each long stroke.

After he has his razor sufficiently beveled, he mixes up his shaving lather, soaking the bristles of his horsehair brush in the steel basin until they're thoroughly saturated and then gathering glycerin onto the brush from a tureen of Vinolia Shaving Soap. He whips the glycerin to a frothy lather in a small ceramic bowl as though he were Ma Jones whisking eggs for breakfast and checks its consistency between his fingers.

The whole process takes several minutes and Puck hums while he works, seemingly enjoying the opportunity to show off this part of his daily routine to Santana.

"Now comes the fun part," Puck says, passing the bowl of lather and his brush into Santana's hands.

Still wearing his idiot smile, he doffs his hat and sets it down on the grass beside the stool before gathering up his shaving towel and tucking it into the collar of his shirt, as though it were a bib and he about to dine. Shifting the towel around to cover his shoulders at both the back and front, he sits down on the stool.

"Ta-dah!" he says, wagging his eyebrows at Santana.

She frowns, incredulous. "That was the fun part?"

Puck laughs. "No, ladybird. The fun part is you soaping up my whole head. You've got to paint all that lather on and cover up everywhere you see hair."

"Oh," Santana says, glancing from the bowl in her hands to Puck and then back again.

Honestly, Santana doesn't know what fun she's supposed to have covering Puck's sweaty scalp with shaving soap. She doesn't like being close to Puck and touching him causes her considerable discomfort. When she steps up behind Puck, she can already smell him. God. Gingerly, she touches the horsehair brush to the back of his head, dabbing a smidgen of lather onto his crown.

"Oh, come on, ladybird! You've got to do better than that," Puck goads. "Really get it on there good or otherwise that razor won't do its work."

Santana sighs and applies a more liberal swatch of shaving soap to Puck's hair. Only once he nods his approval does she continue in her efforts.

When Santana first met Puck in New York, he wore his hair shorn so short that he may as well have been bald. Over the few months that he worked at the bachelor cottage, Puck would have his hair cut after every few weeks, always shaving it down before it could show its full blackness again. Like Puck told Santana this morning, he last shaved his head just before Santana's father's funeral, just over a month ago. Now his hair is as long as Santana's ever seen it, almost a third of an inch thick all over his head.

If Santana cared about how Puck looked, she might tell him not to have a haircut at all, for somehow having hair makes Puck seem younger than he is, and she has always liked Puck better as a boy than as anything else because he's more harmless that way.

Puck smirks his devil smirk, and Santana feels it through his scalp.

* * *

><p>Soaping Puck's head is tedious work. Santana requires several minutes to coat Puck's scalp in lather and then another several more to whip the lather into the proper consistency and rub it against the grain of Puck's hair so as to make the hair stand on end. As she works, Santana twists the brush back and forth as though it were the pretty spinning skirt of a dancing girl. Thinking of dancing girls brings Santana's thoughts to Brittany.<p>

(What Santana wouldn't give to be off with her true love instead of here, making a fool of herself in front of her fake-husband!)

Puck looks like a snowcapped mountain with his head white but face swarthy. "Use the towel to wipe the soap off my ears," he instructs, and Santana does as he tells her to do. He gestures to the straight razor lying on the vegetable crate. "Start in the center," he coaches, "and keep the blade flat. Use your other thumb to stretch my skin back and keep the hair raised up. You just want to glide it, nice and easy. The razor will do all the work. Just go with the grain, ladybird, slow as you like."

Santana would like not to shave Puck's head at all, but since she told him she'd do so, she supposes she ought to keep to her word.

With great trepidation, she raises the razor to Puck's head, pressing her free thumb to the cap of his skull and cringing at the texture of the slippery shaving foam under her fingertip. Holding down the skin, she handles the razor blade like her father would his scalpel, with two fingers pinching the shank and the handle resting between her other fingers. She keeps a loose wrist and does exactly as Puck advises her.

"All right," she says, more to herself than to Puck.

She makes her first cut and doesn't maim Puck's head.

It's a strange sensation, feeling the shaving soap and Puck's hair beneath steel. At first, the razor cuts through Puck's hair, halving it. Only on its second pass does it actually reveal Puck's skin. Santana quickly discovers that it would be easier to hurt herself than to hurt Puck's scalp, given the trajectory of the razor. She makes certain to keep her free hand well away from the blade, pinching Puck's skin back, just like he instructed. After every stroke of the razor, she wipes the blade along Puck's towel, cleaning it of lather.

"That's good work, ladybird," Puck praises.

His eyelashes flutter closed close to her wrist, and he relaxes his back against her front. She makes another pass with the razor, and he hums, pleased.

At first, Santana tries to ignore Puck's grateful noises, but then Santana adjusts her right hand against the cap of Puck's head, tautening his skin through the shaving lather with her thumb, and Puck lets out a grunt of pleasure like he does in the mornings when he eats hotcakes.

Suddenly, Santana finds it impossible to pretend that she can't hear Puck. She squirms, uncomfortable, and tries not to touch Puck as much as she did before.

Santana manages to shave the whole top of Puck's head and the area above his left ear before someone happens upon their makeshift barbershop. She sees the person's shadow along the grass before she sees anything else and almost flinches, for Puck chooses that exact instant to let out another happy moan.

"Jesus, ladybird!"

Santana looks up from her work, panicked, and finds Brittany standing just a few paces off from Puck, arms crossed over tatty dress and cat-smirk fully in place. Brittany's hair shines, still damp from her recent shower and backlit by sun gold. Brittany doesn't speak aloud but mouths out, _Hey, darlin'_.

If it upsets Brittany to see Santana with her hands all over Puck's person, Brittany doesn't let on about it all. She sits down on the grass, curling her legs beneath her, and nods for Santana to continue working, if Santana will. As usual, Brittany seems infinitely curious about what Santana is doing. She also seems perfectly willing to linger throughout the remainder of Puck's haircut, even though she has no obligation to do so.

For her part, Santana just feels glad to have Brittany with her again.

It eases the tension inside of her and makes the task at hand seem not so daunting.

With Brittany around, the process of Puck's haircut becomes a strange tripartite dance, with Santana cutting Puck's hair, Brittany watching her do it, and Puck with his eyes still closed, oblivious to Brittany's presence. Whenever Puck sighs or grunts his approval, Brittany makes a goofy face and mouths out _Jesus_, calming Santana's nerves and making the haircut into a game.

As the minutes wear on, Santana's wrist begins to ache. She shifts the razor in her hand, and it glints against the afternoon sunlight, a blinding blink of brightness. Perspiration beads at the back of her neck and under her arms, and she fights the impulse to hurry her task, wanting more than anything to finish it so that she can run off with Brittany, leaving Puck behind.

"How goes it, ladybird?" Puck asks, his eyes still closed and posture lazy.

"Swell," Brittany answers for Santana.

Santana almost chokes on her laughter when Puck doesn't seem to notice the difference between voices. He groans and leans back further against Santana, his body warm from day heat, and accepts Brittany as Santana.

(He never notices Santana, no matter what she does.)

* * *

><p>It takes five minutes for Santana to clean all the lather from Puck's head and to check her work over for any missed spots. The hardest part of the job is not nicking the soft fleshy spot just where Puck's scalp meets his ears, but once Santana realizes that she must only trim just a few of the hairs around Puck's ears at a time, she accomplishes even that maneuver quickly and efficiently.<p>

She wipes the last of the lather from Puck's head and her own hands with Puck's towel and steps back from the stool. "All done," she announces, glad to have finished such an odious chore.

For the first time since Santana began shaving his head, Puck opens his eyes. He immediately spots Brittany sitting in front of him, seemingly appeared from nowhere. Brittany claps her hands as if she were a patron delighted by a magic trick on the midway, and Puck starts at the sight of her.

"Shit, Brittany! When did you get here?" he asks.

Brittany puts on her blank face. "When you were balder than Kurt's daddy but not as bald as Methuselah," she says, standing up and brushing grass from her skirt.

(Kurt's father works at the circus? Santana hadn't known.)

Though Santana finds Brittany's answer clever, Puck doesn't share Santana's opinion. He turns away from Brittany, rolling his eyes. "Of course, you did," he mutters, low enough that only Santana can hear him.

While he starts to rub his hand up the back of his neck and over his head, checking Santana's handiwork, Santana meets Brittany's eyes, silently asking Brittany if they're going to run off somewhere together once Puck grants them leave. Brittany's cat-smile is Santana's yes. Something flutters in Santana's belly, vivid with excitement. She turns back to Puck just in time to see him smile at his new haircut.

"You didn't do half bad," he says approvingly.

Puck means what he says as a compliment, but it's actually a fair assessment of Santana's work: she didn't do a half-bad job at cutting Puck's hair, insofar as she didn't hurt him, but she also didn't do a half-good job at cutting Puck's hair, insofar as she gave him an uneven shave, entirely balding him in some places and leaving Yale stubble behind in others. It isn't an altogether terrible job—Santana just left Puck looking a bit shabby, is all, and particularly as the skin at the top of his head shines much paler than the skin on his face. The few spots of darker stubble contrasted against the whiteness of his new bald places gives him a mottled appearance.

He puts on what he must suppose is a winning look. "What do you think, ladybird?"

Santana doesn't think anything. Puck looks like himself. Nothing about his person either impresses or distresses her. She shrugs with just one shoulder.

Puck seems to mistake Santana's silence for shy liking. His idiot smile blooms. "You two okay putting this stuff back in the tent?" he asks, indicating both Santana and Brittany and gesturing to the oak stool and steel washbasin where they sit upon the grass.

The girls both nod.

Puck grins, pleased. "Good," he says, "'cause I've got to get back to town." He retrieves his hat from the ground and sets it on his head before quickly gathering up the items from his shaving kit, setting his razor, whetstone, bowl, brush, and shaving soap back inside the small wooden box from whence he originally procured them. Once he has everything in order, he sets the shaving kit down on the vegetable crate and tips his hat to Santana. "Thanks awfully, ladybird," he tells her. "I knew you could do it."

Without warning, he lifts his hat and leans in. Santana inhales the clean, chemical scent of glycerin and the hot musk of Puck's sweat. In the next second, his lips brush hers, stealing her breath away, not in the pleasant sense but as if she had been robbed.

Santana's eyes widen, and she takes a step back from Puck, breaking their lips apart in what would be a dramatic reaction, except that Puck chooses that exact instant to peel back from Santana in kind. His motion hides hers, gentling it into nothing meaningful.

He entirely misses the fact that she hadn't wanted to kiss him.

"You and Brittany stay out of trouble," he cautions. "Once you finish cleaning up here, you'd best go ask Ma Jones if she needs help making supper."

Santana scarcely hears his suggestion.

She remains halted, too affronted to say or do anything.

Vaguely, Santana registers Puck walking away. She sees his shadow trail along the grass and down the tent row in the direction of the big top. Her ears ring and not just from the usual summer drone of bugs and grasses and bird wings all in motion. Though Puck's kiss was a brief one—scarcely more than a peck—Santana can still taste it all over her mouth. It's the sourest, worst flavor in the world, and she almost spits to rid herself of it.

Puck just kissed Santana in front of Brittany.

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't think she's ever hated Puck more than she hates him now—not even the other night, when he accused her of fornicating with Sam Evans and all the gilly boys. Of course, Santana hates herself as much as she hates Puck. She should have slapped Puck as soon as he put his face close to hers. She should have screamed at him.<p>

Why does she always turn so still until it's too late?

Santana can only imagine what Brittany must think—and especially considering that Brittany only confessed her love to Santana yesterday and now Santana has kissed someone else right before her eyes. Santana braces herself, unsure of what it will be like to have Brittany cross at her for the fist time since they've known each other. She tries to make an apology but finds that she can't speak, for when she considers how very sorry she is, tears well in her eyes and a knot forms in her throat, blocking it.

She is so, so sorry.

Her lip trembles, and she waits.

Except.

Brittany doesn't say anything to Santana. She moves, and Santana hears it. She moves, and Santana sees her silhouette graceful upon the earth. Santana hears Brittany shift Puck's shaving kit upon the vegetable crate, gathering it up, and though Santana fears to look, she can't help but do it. Curiosity overcomes her, and she glances at Brittany from the corner of her eye.

For whatever she had expected to see, she finds Brittany starting to dismantle the makeshift barbershop just as placidly as if nothing had happened. Brittany meets Santana's look, but says nothing, just goes about her business, tucking the shaving kit under her arm and stabilizing the washbasin on the crate, preparing to haul the thing back to the tent.

Brittany's expression is tight, her lips pursed and the corners of her mouth turned down not precisely in a frown or grimace but more into a wince, so they resemble the flap of an envelope tucked in upon its own pocket. If Santana peers closely enough, she thinks she can see sadness in Brittany's countenance but no anger.

Disappointment, maybe.

"I'm sorry I let Puck kiss me," Santana chokes out.

Brittany grabs hold of the vegetable crate by the slats in its sides. She shakes her head, and her hair falls, curtaining her face. "Not your fault," she says, just so.

Her passivity baffles Santana.

"You're not sore at me?" Santana asks.

Brittany hefts up the vegetable crate and washbasin onto her hip with a grunt. "Nope," she says. "Why would I be?" She meets Santana's eyes.

It's a kind question but also one that tries to make something very complicated entirely too simple. For as much as Santana wants to accept Brittany's gesture, she can't do so, and Brittany knows she can't. Brittany sighs, face falling.

"I'm not sore at you. You didn't do anything wrong. It's just that I wish that you and I could go away someplace where you didn't have to kiss anyone except for who you wanted to kiss," Brittany corrects herself.

It's the closest either she or Santana has ever come to talking about Santana's arrangements with Puck and how much both girls have begun to regret them.

Just then, the vegetable crate starts to slip from Brittany's hipbone, and Santana rushes forward, catching the crate by its underside, helping Brittany to lift it. "I only ever want to kiss you, Britt," she says, all in a rush.

Her artlessness changes Brittany's sullen expression to a much pleasanter look—the beginnings of a smile. "I was kind of hoping you'd say that," Brittany admits. Her eyes turn reverent and deep, and she starts to lean forward across the crate. Santana takes her cue.

The two girls duck their heads, meeting in the middle with the crate and washbasin still suspended between them. Santana smells tallow on Brittany's skin and feels the last lacings of water still in Brittany's hair as it tickles at her neck. Their lips brush only for the shortest instant, but it's enough to rid Santana of the nasty Puck flavor in her mouth. She sighs into the kiss, closing her eyes and losing herself to Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

"Better?" Brittany asks, pulling away.

"Much," Santana says honestly, opening her eyes to find Brittany wearing a full smile now. She shrugs her shoulder in the direction of the tent, signaling Brittany that they ought to start walking. Brittany nods her agreement and they begin to lug their cargo between them, shuffling along. Now that they've resolved the issue of Puck's kiss, Santana feels keen to ask Brittany about another matter altogether, and so she does. "How about you, BrittBritt? I was worried about you during the show. What happened to your father? How did he hurt his foot?"

Brittany kicks open the tent flap, gesturing Santana inside. "He dropped his shaving mirror and stepped on the glass in his bare feet," she explains, helping Santana to set the vegetable crate down in its place. "He was confused."

Santana frowns. She remembers the day when Brittany's father boxed Brittany's ear. Brittany said that her father was confused then, too.

"Confused about what?" Santana asks. "Could he not see the broken glass on the ground?"

Brittany shakes her head. "It was because of his medicine," Brittany says. "It makes his headaches go away."

Santana knows she oughtn't to ask—that it isn't really her business—but the physician's daughter in her can't help but wonder. "What kind of medicine, Britt?"

Brittany's expression turns very serious for the question. Her brow furrows, and she bites her lip. "I don't know what it's called," she says, "but it comes in a little brown bottle with an Indian brave drawn on it. The label has an E and an X and some other letters, but I don't know what those letters are because they're the little kind, and you haven't taught me those yet."

To say that Santana feels two ways at once for Brittany's word would only be the half of it.

In the first place, Santana's heart squeezes tight in her chest as she imagines Brittany inside the Pierce tent, trying to pick out letters on various bric-a-brac amongst her father's belongings. She pictures Brittany tracing over the medicine bottle with her finger, memorizing the characters that are familiar to her and wondering about the ones that aren't. Brittany's cleverness and dedication delight Santana and fill her with a warm, welling sort of pride.

(She's in love with the most brilliant girl in the world, she thinks—and the sweetest one, too.)

(The most precious and best.)

But that isn't all.

In the second place, concern gnaws at the pit of Santana's belly, for she knows the missing letters on the medicine label, even if Brittany can't name them for her.

Brittany's father is taking an elixir—probably one made from laudanum and sold to him by the same sort of mountebanks against whom Santana's father always railed.

The thought that someone would willfully deceive poor Mr. Pierce when all he wanted was some relief from his headaches is enough to turn Santana's insides cold and put flint into her heart. She hates whatever quack or swindler would prey upon someone in such distress—and especially when she knows that whoever did it not only defrauded Mr. Pierce and addled his mind but also put Brittany in danger.

Though she despises herself for prying, Santana must ask, "Had your father taken his medicine when he hurt your ear the other day, Britt?"

She holds Brittany's gaze under the gray shadows of the tent and reaches out to touch Brittany's wrist now that they have their hands free. Red thread brushes over the curve of Brittany's bone, and Brittany scowls, not at the sensation and not at Santana but at the ghosts behind Santana's query. Her jaw sets tight, and she nods.

"It just makes him so confused," she repeats. "He doesn't mean it, though."

What she says sounds strangely like a plea.

The more part of Santana wants to hate Mr. Pierce just like she hates the stranger who swindled him, for it strikes her that Mr. Pierce ought to realize how his elixir clouds his mind and causes him to do harm by Brittany. If Mr. Pierce truly cared for his daughter, he would stop taking his awful medicine for her sake, would he not? Would he not care for her more than for himself and his own pain? Wouldn't he be unselfish?

(Santana's father's obituary stated no definitive cause for his death. He was young and apparently healthy until the moment that he died. His lawyers claimed that he "expired at will.")

(Santana seethes with shame and anger. She can't understand it, she can't.)

Brittany's words sound rehearsed—like something Brittany has told herself on more than one occasion previously. Santana thinks back to when Brittany's father boxed Brittany's ear. She wants that day to have been the only one on which Mr. Pierce has ever injured his daughter doing something other than their circus act.

"Has he hurt you before, Britt?" Santana asks in a small voice, rubbing her thumb over Brittany's wrist again.

Brittany is quick to shake her head. "He hasn't hurt me," she says. She pauses, her gaze shifting back and forth between Santana's eyes. Eventually, her look seems to stop on something. She starts again, "—but sometimes he says things that he doesn't mean."

Santana can only imagine the kinds of things that a man as hardened as Mr. Pierce might say under the effects of such a powerful drug. She hates to think of him insulting Brittany or cursing her or blaming her for things which aren't her fault. Santana recalls how keenly it stung when her own grandmother died spewing maledictions about her; she hates to think how she would have felt if it had been Papa who had spoken about her in that way. Brittany seems so small just now, and Santana's heart aches.

When Abuela started to hate her, Santana stopped talking to the old woman—stopped going in to see her and trying to give her comfort. Since Abuela wouldn't have changed her mind anyway and it wounded Santana too deeply to even stand in her presence, Santana started avoiding her.

Brittany doesn't avoid her father, though.

"Golly," Santana whispers.

Brittany quirks an eyebrow. "What?"

Santana tries to explain what strikes her. "It's just—," she says. "It's just that you don't ever seem to mind your father, even though he says cruel things to you." She pets over Brittany's wrist again, absentminded. "He just seems like a hard person to be around, is all."

Brittany shrugs.

"He wasn't always," she says, as if that's the entire matter.

But it isn't.

She shrugs again.

"When it was time to meet the new baby, Sam's mama told me it was my job to heat the rags on the hearth and bring them over to her, but Daddy had to stay out in the hall. It was night, and we were at a hotel, but the room had electric lamps, so everyone could see. Sam's mama kept saying how good everything was, but then it wasn't anymore—good. There was so much blood all over the bed sheets and on floor and on Sam's mama's shoes. Mama wanted us with her, so Daddy had to come inside. Mama put my hand in Daddy's, and she said to him, 'Darlin', Brittany will take care of you, and you'll take care of Brittany.' I left the last rag on too long. It singed the edge and smelled like wet leaves in the cooking fire."

Brittany shrugs for a third time.

"Daddy and I are supposed to take care of each other now."

Brittany has spoken about her mother's death to Santana on two other occasions since they've known each other, but never has she done so in as much detail as she does now. Before today, Brittany had never mentioned how her mother died. She also hadn't told Santana that she was in the room to see it happen. Santana feels a pang and wraps her hand around Brittany's wrist, holding her.

"Oh, Britt," she says, "I'm sure you didn't mean to burn it." Then, "I'm sorry about your mama."

Brittany nods and reaches down, closing her hand around Santana's hand, like the inside spiral of a seashell coiled about itself. She squeezes Santana's fingers and fixes Santana with a queer look, peering out from underneath her hair.

"You don't remember your mama at all?" she asks.

Santana shakes her head. "No," she admits. "I don't even know what she looked like."

It's strange, Santana thinks, that two girls could be bereft of their mothers in such very different ways and yet share a single sense of grief concerning their experiences. Brittany lost her mother, whereas Santana never really had her mother to begin with, but both of them carry a notion of missing something that they can't exactly name—that they can't describe, though they know precisely what it is.

Brittany squeezes Santana's fingers again. "I'll bet your mama was really beautiful," she says.

Santana nods, her throat suddenly thick. "I'll bet yours was, too."

For a second, the two girls remain still, but then they kiss each other's hands.

(There's no one else in the world but each other to whom they'd trust their sacred things.)

* * *

><p>The girls make short work of moving the stool back inside the tent and rearranging Puck and Santana's things, setting the tent back in order.<p>

At first, they don't speak aloud to each other, still wrapped in the seriousness of their previous conversation, but then they start to take turns giving each other little butterfly kisses at odd places, on wrists and at ears and against shoulders and along the undersides of chins.

Before they head back outside from the tent, they kiss each other full on the mouths, long and lazy and slow. When they break the kiss, it makes a popping sound, and both girls laugh. As their displays of affection become bolder, they soon find it impossible to remain quiet and begin to chat, with Brittany teasing Santana that she ought to become a barber, and Santana protesting that she would only know how to give one kind of haircut if she did.

"I'd just sheer it all off every time," she laughs.

Brittany spares her a wink. "I would definitely recommend your shop to Rachel Berry, then."

Though Puck instructed Brittany and Santana to go help Ma Jones in the kitchen once they finished up at the tent, the girls don't heed his word. Instead, they start to wander off in the direction of the business side of camp, linked pinky finger in pinky finger and smiling tight-lipped at each other. They traipse along between the tent rows, avoiding other circus folk when they can, becoming increasingly giddy with their every step.

Just as they happen upon the billboard partition, a great gust of wind billows across the prairie, carrying with it the scents of myriad wildflowers and a slightest kick-up of dust. Something in the wind tickles at Santana's nose, and she sneezes before she can cover her face.

When she looks up again, lightheaded and flustered, she finds Brittany staring at her and wearing a most peculiar, adoring expression, as if in disbelief that she's real.

"Excuse me," Santana says, self-conscious.

Brittany laughs. "Bless your soul," she says gently.

When she continues to stare, Santana squirms. "What?"

Brittany bites her lip. "You just have the sweetest little sneeze in the world, is all," she says. She seems to deliberate with herself about elaborating further but then decides to do so, leaning in close to Santana and whispering to her, conspiratorial. "Back before I told you that I'm in love with you, you would do all your little sweet Santana-things, and I almost couldn't stand it. My heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest, and I always had to kiss you or touch you or hold your hand, or otherwise I would have said it all right then, even if there were other people around."

Santana just rolls her eyes. "Oh _lands_, Britt," she says.

(She really means something else.)

In a strange way, now that Santana and Brittany have begun talking about their love for each other, it almost seems like the only thing to talk about—like the best, most important conversation they can have, mainly because they held off from having it for so long.

It's weird and wonderful for Santana to think about Brittany being just as sweet on and confused about and silly for her as she was for Brittany. She smiles widely for imagining it all just as she and Brittany happen upon the elephant pen.

Whereas on her and Santana's first visit to the elephant pen, Brittany rushed over to the palisade and climbed right up it, eager to introduce Santana to her pachyderm friends, today Brittany stays herself, hanging back and keeping hold of Santana's hand. It's a thoughtful concession on her part, but one that Santana doesn't want Brittany to have to make. She knows how much Brittany adores the elephants, after all.

Santana gives Brittany a tug on the hand, gesturing in the direction of the pen. Once Brittany realizes what Santana means, she shoots Santana a questioning look, asking without speaking if Santana feels certain about her decision. When Santana nods in affirmation, Brittany positively beams.

(It's entirely, entirely worth it.)

Brittany practically skips when approaching the pen, bringing Santana right against the palisades, close enough to see through the gaps between the logs. The logs radiate heat though they cast shade so that the whole pen feels warm, like food baked on the edge of the fire. Santana spots Deborah first, for Deborah stands closest to the fence, and then Methuselah a ways behind Deborah. Bathsheba, the smallest, youngest elephant, lies down at the back of the pen, facing away from Brittany and Santana.

Though Bathsheba's posture alarms Santana—who has never known an elephant to lie on its side before—Brittany seems unconcerned about it and slides her arm through a slat in the fence to start waving the elephants over. It takes several seconds before Deborah and Methuselah notice Brittany's motion, but once they do, they lumber in Brittany's direction.

"Come on," Brittany coaxes them. "That's the way, folks. Right here, right here."

As the elephants draw up to the barrier, Brittany shoots Santana another questioning look, asking her if she's still all right with the idea of being so close to such large animals. Honestly, Santana does feel a bit dizzy at the prospect of standing so near to a creature that could potentially obliterate her, but having her hand in Brittany's also grants her a kind of courage she could never have just on her own.

She puts on a brave face. "Hey, folks," she says, offering up her free arm through a gap in the fence. She holds her breath, waiting.

(Brittany smiles at her like she's one of the heroes from Mr. Hawthorne's Tanglewood books, and it's worth it, worth it, worth it.)

Of course, for all her bravado, Santana quails once Deborah and Methuselah get up right beside her, feeling the awful sort of insignificance that comes from finding oneself in the presence of something truly great.

Santana had never gotten so close to an elephant before; she hadn't realized how hairy they were or how deeply the furrows in their skin ran, like rows hoed into a dirt field. Their hides smell like dried grass and dust. They reach out with their curious trunks, Deborah grabbing for Brittany's hand and Methuselah for Santana's.

Santana's stomach swoops when the wet nub of Methuselah's nose curls around her fingers. She hadn't known what to expect from his touch, but it certainly wasn't such measured strength and dexterity. Methuselah seems to count over her knuckles, massaging them one by one. Though he could easily crush Santana's bones in his grasp, he doesn't. Rather, he moves with a surpassing gentleness, as if he's somehow aware that Santana fears him and he wants to earn her trust.

He fans himself with his ears and turns his head from side to side as he explores, eyeing Santana up and down. If she didn't know any better, she would say that he was trying to determine if she were any good for Brittany.

She isn't the only one who seems to notice.

"Isn't Santana just swell?" Brittany asks, breathless, casting a knowing glance at Methuselah. "You remember how I told you that I'm in love with her? Well, it turns out that she's in love with me, too. Isn't that just dandy?"

(Santana is in love with the most brilliant girl in the world, she thinks—and the sweetest one, too.)

(The most precious and best.)

Santana would fuss about how Brittany's not fair, but she doesn't get the chance to say anything before Bathsheba lets out a raucous and wheedling trumpet from the far side of the pen. The noise is so loud that Santana, Brittany, and the other two elephants jolt at the sound of it.

When they look to where Bathsheba lies, they find her flicking up dust from the floor of the pen with her trunk, spreading the stuff about with obvious distaste. Bathsheba tosses her head to and fro against the earth and trumpets again, annoyed.

Brittany scrunches up her face. "Sometimes Bathsheba throws fits almost as bad as Mrs. Schuester's," she says disapprovingly.

Santana can't imagine what kind of displeasure an elephant might have to throw a fit about it, but she does know that she's glad that Bathsheba is on the other side of the pen from where she and Brittany stand.

Brittany wears her cat-smile. "Deborah is a disciplinarian, but Methuselah lets Bathsheba get away with whatever she likes. I keep telling Methuselah that he's spoiling Bathsheba rotten, but he's just so doting that he can't help himself," she explains, talking like it's entirely usual to converse with elephants about their styles of parenting.

(And maybe to a girl who grew up at the circus, somehow it is.)

* * *

><p>After saying goodbye to the elephants—including Bathsheba, still having her fit—the girls continue wandering, eventually escaping the boundaries of the camp and making their way into the meadow beyond it.<p>

They wade deep into the tawny sea of prairie dropseed, picking up their skirts to keep them from snagging on stray weeds along the way. When they find a patch of flatter grass, Brittany pulls Santana in close to her so that their hips line up. She sways, dancing with no music, turning herself and Santana in little circles.

"Thank you for playing hooky with me," she says.

Santana smirks. "You are a bad influence on me, Brittany Pierce. Sam tried to warn me that you would be, and I should have listened to him."

"You should have," Brittany agrees, "because now you're destined for a life of trouble."

"Oh! I shall never amount to anything!" Santana laments, putting on a false proper accent and pretending to swoon, covering her brow and falling back so that Brittany must support her weight.

Her action takes Brittany a bit by surprise, and both girls lose their balance, collapsing in a fit of giggles, sprawling on the ground with their legs all tangled, Brittany kneeling on Santana's skirts and Santana flat on her back.

"So how does it feel to be so criminal?" Brittany asks, leaning forward so that she's on fours over Santana. She brushes a stray strand of hair away from Santana's face. Her shadow shields Santana's eyes from the brightness of the sun.

Santana wraps her arms around Brittany's waist, holding Brittany in place above her. "Devastating," she grins.

Brittany thumbs along Santana's jaw line, peering into Santana's eyes from above. Her hair hangs around her and Santana like golden thread rested over a loom in a fairytale. Though her body doesn't touch Santana's, Santana can still feel her heat all over. "You do seem very upset," Brittany says thoughtfully, leaning down to kiss Santana but stopping just short of her lips.

"Very," Santana repeats, suddenly finding it difficult to focus on anything but Brittany's breath against her skin. Her eyes shift back and forth between Brittany's, chasing unpaintable blue and tiger flecks. She starts to sit up from the grass.

Her forehead meets Brittany's, skin upon skin, and Brittany shifts, allowing her more room. She sits up even farther until Brittany is in her lap and she's supporting them with her arms out straight behind her. Brittany's hips push up against her belly, and she feels heat, drawing one sharp breath as Brittany kisses her and then another as Brittany's tongue starts to trace over her own. Brittany grins into the kiss, running her hands up Santana's sides, and Santana grabs onto Brittany's waist, holding herself upright.

Their kissing turns sloppier the more that they touch until Brittany says, "Just let me," and starts sucking at a spot just under Santana's ear.

For all of Santana's thinking about how strange it is to feel two seemingly contradictory emotions at the same time, it didn't occur to her until now that perhaps the strangest sensation of all is to feel both too much and not enough at once. Everything in her body seems to focus on just two spots.

"Britt," she groans, softening inside.

She closes her eyes, focused on Brittany's breath against her ear and the ebb she can feel deep in her belly every time her heart beats. Sun and Brittany heat combine, warming Santana all over and all the way down to her core. Her hips move of their own accord, angling to Brittany. Brittany's tongue laves at the spot on her neck.

When Brittany's hips move in time to Santana's, Santana suddenly realizes what she and Brittany are doing and where.

She gasps and pulls back from Brittany's kiss.

"We—," she says, out of breath.

Brittany seems to understand. She laughs. "Oops," she says harmlessly, retracting.

When Brittany shifts from Santana's lap, it feels like some sort of punishment for both of them, but Santana knows it's for the best, and particularly considering that it will be time for the evening fair soon enough.

Brittany sits down across from Santana. Her eyes look like the ocean, and she breathes like the wind after a storm. When she looks over Santana's body, Santana can almost see her remembering their touching the other day in the tent, feeling it on her fingertips.

Santana swallows, completely self-aware under Brittany's attention, and only then does Brittany seem to notice her own staring. Her ears pink, and she reaches for a purple coneflower peeking out of the grass at her side, starting immediately to denude the flowers of its petals, pulling them off at first in clumps but then one by one, finicking at her task as though it were suddenly very important to her.

Her carefulness puts an old refrain into Santana's mind like a song.

"She loves me," Santana whispers, waiting until Brittany meets her eyes so that she can see if Brittany knows the game. When Brittany offers her a hopeful smile and plucks another petal from the bloom, Santana goes on. "She loves me not."

Brittany continues stripping the flower. "She loves me," she chimes in.

The next petal falls away.

"She loves me not," Santana recites.

Brittany's smile starts to grow. "She loves me," she amends.

Santana nods. "She loves me not."

"She loves me."

"She loves me not."

"She loves me."

"She loves me not."

Soon the girls cease to speak, though they still hear the refrain playing through their minds as if they repeated it aloud. _Effeuiller la marguerite_—just like in Goethe. Brittany tears another petal away from the flower and another and another. It isn't important, Santana realizes, for the flower to tell them what they already know, but still she can't help but feel a fervent interest in the outcome of the game.

_She loves me not._

_She loves me._

_She loves me not._

"She loves me."

The final petal flitters to the sling of Brittany's skirt, a single swatch of purple amidst so much worn blue, and Brittany and Santana meet each other's eyes, grinning. It's silly for them to be so excited, they know, they know, they know.

(But.)

"You promise?" Santana asks, watching as Brittany twirls the flower stem between her fingers as if it were the handle to a parasol and she a fancy lady.

Brittany nods and raises a hand to her own chest, drawing an _X_ just below her collarbone, one stroke over another. "Cross my heart," she promises. "Heaps and for keeps. Forever and ever."

It's just a game, Santana knows, but it also isn't just that—not to the girl who, until just a few days ago, had thought that no living creature would ever love her again, not to the girl who had had good reason to question whether anyone who had ever purported to love her in the past had really loved her at all. Gratitude spreads quickly through Santana's heart. It settles in her bones and pricks at her eyes.

"I will, too, you know—love you forever," she says, reaching out to set a hand on Brittany's knee.

Anyone else in the world might think that Santana was foolish, getting so worked up over daisies and rhymes, but Brittany doesn't. She reaches for Santana's hand, lacing their grasps together, left to left, red thread to red thread. "Come here," she says, tugging Santana toward her at the same time that she moves forward herself until the two of them kneel right beside each other. She coaxes Santana to lie down.

Still joined at the hands, the girls slump to their sides, reclining upon the grass until their kneecaps touch and their heads lie even with each other. They rest upon the coneflower petals with tall grass all around them, hiding them, so that if anyone were to look out over the meadow, they would be invisible. A slight wind rushes over their secret place, rustling the grasses and hiding the sound of their breaths. It's quiet, like lying down in a whisper.

When Brittany starts to kiss Santana, it's in a different way than before—slow and attentive, with little nods and changes. Brittany kisses first Santana's bottom lip, then the top, and then both at once. She kisses Santana from pink to red, from shallow to deep, from _you're welcome_ to _thank you_. Santana sinks down, feeling the grass against her cheek and the skittishness of the encircling prairie and Brittany all about her, her home, her home, her home. Sun seeps into her clothes and hair and filters through her closed eyelids. She kisses Brittany through oranges, yellows, and starbursts.

(There's no one else in the world but Brittany to whom she'd trust her sacred things.)

* * *

><p>Santana and Brittany kiss for a long, long time, Brittany leading as Santana follows. Santana pets through Brittany's hair with her free hand while Brittany strokes at Santana's ribs through her shirt, memorizing the gaps and filling of them.<p>

It doesn't take long for Santana's insides to start to soften again, to pulse with the beat of her heart. Brittany's kisses feel so good, and Santana can't help but think about how Brittany's touches would feel even better. She tilts her head down so that Brittany's lips meet her cheek rather than her lips for the moment.

"Britt," she says. "I want—I want to do what we did the other day after you threw me in the creek. I want to do what we did in my tent again."

Brittany's kisses still against Santana's skin. It takes a full second for Brittany to answer. "You mean right now?" Brittany asks, breathless.

Santana looks up to find Brittany staring at her, wide-eyed. Brittany's pupils fill her irises, black blotting out all but the barest sliver of blue, an eclipse of the sun. Santana smiles to see Brittany's reaction.

"Well, yes," she says, "but also no. I mean, I'd love to—"

Brittany finishes her thought, "—but we shouldn't right now."

"No, not right now."

"But later."

"Later, yes. Tomorrow, maybe. If Puck leaves camp again during the day, we could always—"

"—in your tent."

"Before the show, yes."

"Right."

"Right."

Brittany's smile lights up her whole face. "It's like we're going to have a surprise party just for us," she says excitedly, giving Santana's waist a squeeze.

"And I get to go to that party with the best girl in the whole world," Santana says, pleased beyond pleased. She kisses Brittany's nose, and Brittany laughs a bit at first but then turns serious.

"Darlin'?" Brittany asks.

"Yeah, BrittBritt?"

Brittany smoothes through Santana's hair. "How did you first know you were sweet on me? I mean, how did you know you liked me different than how you would like a friend?"

Like so many of Brittany's questions, it's a queer thing to ask, and it concerns a topic about which Santana hasn't given much thought before. Of course, Santana only realized that she was in love with Brittany after Ma Jones put the idea into her head, and that event in itself was a strange one, for Santana went from not realizing that she was sweet on Brittany at all in one moment to knowing truly and through her very heart that she was in love with Brittany in the next.

Santana searches Brittany's eyes, not quite sure of what to say.

"It's just—," Brittany starts. "Well, it's that I keep thinking about how lucky it is that we found each other. I thought there weren't any other girls like me."

"I never imagined what the heroes looked like in books," Santana says suddenly.

Brittany quirks an eyebrow, a funny, lopsided smile curling her lip. "What?" she says.

Santana repeats. "I never bothered to imagine what the heroes looked like in books. But I always imagined what the heroines looked like because they had pretty hair and eyes and the authors called them such nice things, like lovely and soft. I spent hours thinking about what Mr. Hardy meant when he said that his Tess had a 'mobile peony mouth.'" She laughs at herself. "I should have known that I'd like you, Britt."

Brittany eyes light up. "Why?"

"Because you're more beautiful than any of them," Santana shrugs. When Brittany scoffs, Santana insists. "No, you are. Someone should write a book about you."

"Someone should write book about _you_," Brittany argues.

"A book about _us_," Santana amends, causing Brittany to smile.

"I'd like that," Brittany says, just so, giving Santana another kiss.

For a long while, she and Santana lie alongside each other, trading dopey touches back and forth, playing with each other's hair, pecking one another's lips, watching the shadows from the tall grass change with each fluttering of wind.

(Santana is in love with Brittany and Brittany loves her back.)

They only just hear it when the warning bell rings.

* * *

><p>Anything would have seemed dull after spending the whole afternoon hidden in the heart of a meadow with Brittany, but the evening fair seems especially so, with the patrons all too slow and too self-important and too demanding for Santana to stand. Santana gives very truncated readings to three patrons before a fourth arrives at her booth.<p>

He must only be about Santana's age or younger, dressed in farm duds but with a dollar bill protruding very noticeably from his pocket. He makes a great show of sitting down before Santana, thumbs hitched under his suspenders.

"Howdy," he says. Then, _"Lei è bellissima."_

"Pardon?" Santana says, screwing up her face.

The boy smirks and gestures over his shoulder at Ken standing watch outside Santana's booth. "That feller said you came from Rome," the boy explains, "so I figured you must know I-talian. I told you you're pretty. Didn't I say it right?"

He smirks at Santana, daring her to prove him wrong. She only just manages not to roll her eyes at him. She gestures for him to extend his hand to her.

"You want a palm reading, no?" she asks, her grandmother's accent thick on her words.

The boy offers up his palm. "Sure do," he says.

The way he looks at Santana—like he's so certain that he has her figured out—recalls the worst parts of Puck to her. It puts a hardness into Santana's chest to the point where she finds herself bent on proving the boy wrong about something.

(About everything, maybe.)

She looks over the boy's palm for all of three seconds before deciding what to say to him. She spends another several seconds pretending to pour over the creases in his hand, playacting like she's learning them and gleaning new information from their folds, as one would when studying from a very informative book.

"Oh, that's very _fascinante_," she mutters, cupping her chin with her free hand.

"What?" the boy asks, confused at her Spanish.

Santana meets his eyes. "It's very interesting, sir—your fortune."

"Well, what does it say?" the boy asks, interested but not yet worried.

Santana smirks and points at the suture that runs around the bulb of the boy's thumb. "You see here?" she says. "It is what we call your lifeline—the _cursus vitae_. It tells to me many things."

The boy's eyebrows start to creep up his forehead. He glances from his hand to Santana. "What things?" he asks.

"It tells to me that you are, um—how do we call it? You are a traveler."

"Oh, really? Well, where will I travel to?"

By now, the boy is genuinely invested in what Santana has to say to him, hooked like a fish on a cleverly ornamented lure. Santana hides her smile and traces over the boy's lifeline with her fingernail, as if discerning details from it. "To many places. You will go to Europe, if you like. Or Africa."

"To Africa?"

Not only the boy himself but the whole crowd outside of Santana's gazebo repeats Santana's word, all of them aflutter with the idea of someone from their town visiting such an exotic locale.

Santana leans in closer, curling the boy's palm to her. She draws her nail from the crease at his thumb to the crease under his fingers, where his palm would fold if he were to make a fist, changing her expression from one caballed to one concerned. The boy notices right away.

"What is it?" he asked, engrossed.

Santana feigns at fumbling for words. "It is, uh—we call your heart line."

The boy peers at Santana, mirroring her concern. "And what about it?" he asks.

Santana opens her mouth and then closes it, pretending to deliberate concerning her phrasing. For the briefest second, she wonders if she oughtn't to say what she has planned—if it would be too unkind of her to fool the boy before her—but then she thinks about how the medical student at the morning fair showed no qualms in reading a bad fortune for her, and also about Puck who pressed kisses to her lips when she didn't want them, and about of all the swindlers and false persons in the world, and most of all about Mr. Pierce saying awful things to Brittany under the influence of his medicine, and feels the flint inside herself. The boy still looks at Santana like he knows something about her.

"It tells to me," she says, her voice much calmer than her heart, "that you are best to be alone—that though you travel far and wide, you must not court a woman. You must go through this life without romance. There is no one for you."

In the next second, several things happen. The first thing is that the boy pulls a sour face, as if he had just tasted curdled milk upon his tongue when he had expected sweet cider instead. The second thing that happens is that the whole crowd around Santana's gazebo laughs, amused at both Santana's words and the boy's reaction to them. The third thing that happens is that someone yells out "Guess you'd better tell Sarah, buddy!" and everyone laughs even harder. The fourth thing is that Santana feels awful about saying what she did but desperately tries not to.

She doesn't control the future, after all.

It's the boy's choice whether he takes Santana's advice or not.

The boy shakes his head. "No thank you!" he says, yanking his hand away from Santana and standing up. Several people in the crowd clap him on the back as he retreats to the midway. He shakes his head and mutters, pulling his hat down on his brow.

Ken eyes Santana from his place at the entry to her booth, not exactly displeased with her performance, considering that the more part of the crowd liked it so well, but still seemingly surprised at it. For some reason, his attention causes Santana to feel even worse inside than she already did.

(It's a small person who returns meanness for meanness and an even smaller one who returns meanness for no reason in particular at all.)

When the next patron sits down for his reading, Santana promises him love, happiness, and wellbeing upon wellbeing. She doesn't dare look at the lines in his hand.

It doesn't change what she said to the smirking boy, though.

(It takes brave flowers to be such bright yellow.)

(Brittany never seems to mind her father, even when he says cruel things to her.)

* * *

><p>Mr. Adams serves as the ringmaster at the night show just like he did at the matinee. Just as before, he is comic, personable, and brilliant. Santana tries to forget what happened on the midway by focusing on his antics, attempting to discern for herself what makes Mr. Adams such a fine showman. As far as she can tell, it has something to do with his bravery—with his willingness to fall down with just as much commitment and aplomb as if he were actually standing up.<p>

Santana watches the show from her usual place at the aperture, feeling so many things at once that she can hardly keep hold of all of them.

She feels quicksilver excitement for the plans that she and Brittany have made for tomorrow and also a nebulous kind of anticipation, like so many somethings are all about to happen, from Mr. Remington's second visit to the circus to the two upcoming weddings to even just the distant down day that the weekend promises. She feels both hard and soft inside, deeply affectionate toward and protective of and sweet on some things but angry at and confused about and frustrated concerning others.

She wants nothing to do with Puck and everything to do with Brittany. She's scared for Sam and Ma Jones and Quinn Fabray but thrilled for Brittany and for herself. She misses her father and grandmother and mother more than she ever has missed them before, and yet she desires for nothing that she can have and for no one more than whom she does have at present.

For nearly nineteen years, Santana lived such a stupefied, insulated life, and now she has everything open to her. Now she's alive and in love.

"Come on, ladybird," Puck calls to her, waving her over to prepare for the gypsy act.

The sun has begun to set over the big top, staining the sky with wine tones, bleeding them down the page. Bats and bugs whir in the air. Santana allows Puck to hand the tambourine to her. She watches him strike fire to his and Rachel's implements.

(Sometimes Santana feels very much as if more happens to and around her than she could possibly take in at once.)

She follows Rachel and Puck into the tent, and the smell of char and red-blue heat fill her nostrils, choking at her throat. The music that the circus band plays seizes her. The more she dances before the crowd, the more their faces blur before her. She's seen more people in the last two weeks than she had seen throughout her whole life before she left New York.

Then.

Just as she and Rachel step to the midpoint of the ring, Santana senses a flash of motion at her side, a shadow. Heat sears her face and yellow-white light passes before her eyes like a comet's streaked tail. It all happens so quickly. The crowd lets out a gasp. Santana can almost taste the blaze—fire on her teeth and in her sinuses, close enough to make her flinch.

Puck yells a belated, "Look out!" and Santana stops dead in her tracks.

She checks herself for pain but feels none and then looks to Rachel to make sure that she hasn't missed something. Rachel gapes at her with wide, worried eyes.

It's Rachel's expression that panics Santana, for she suddenly realizes what just happened—that Puck swung his staff so close to her face that he could have struck her with it. For a split instant, Santana imagines her skirts ablaze, herself a pyre. She shudders at the image in her mind, at the nearness of it.

She glances over to Puck, who seems horrified at himself.

_I'm so sorry, ladybird._

The whole exchange—from Puck's mistake to Santana meeting eyes with him—takes less than a few seconds, and Santana, Puck, and Rachel resume their dance right away afterward. Ultimately, neither the audience nor Mr. Adams seems to notice that Puck nearly had an accident at Santana's expense.

One can't say the same thing concerning Rachel, though.

Puck escorts Santana out of the tent, and the two of them stand dumbfounded beneath the twilight. "You're all right, aren't you, ladybird? I didn't mean—it wasn't—I—," Puck stammers, glancing between her and the back entrance to the big top, worried. He seems to wait for something, and, sure enough, it comes to him.

Rachel riding a wave of fury.

The instant she finishes with the Little Malibran sketch, Rachel storms out of the big top to where Puck had already been making a profuse apology to Santana in the backstage.

"Noah Puckerman!" she fumes. "Where is your head? In all my years on stage, I have never witnessed such a foolish mistake as that one—and I've been performing since infancy! If you want your wife's attention in the ring, that's no way to get it! You trying to show off like that nearly got her hurt! You owe Santana an apology, and you owe it to all of us to perform better! You heard Mr. Adams this morning—we can't afford to have any more foul-ups this week! And especially not one that would involve you maiming our only fortuneteller! What do you have to say for yourself?"

Puck daren't say anything but exactly what Rachel wants him to.

"I'm so sorry, ladybird," he mumbles. "I didn't mean to scare you or put you in danger, either. I just wasn't paying attention"—Rachel shoots him a scathing look—"but I should have been paying attention! I just got distracted, is all. I would have felt awful if you had gotten hurt. I know you don't like the fire. I'm so sorry."

He glances between Rachel and Santana and keeps his hands jammed in the pockets of his gypsy breeches. Before Santana can even think through his apology, Rachel has already accepted it.

"Good," Rachel says. She turns to Santana, all of the intensity with which she faced Puck gone away in an instant. When next she speaks, she does so with perfect concern in her voice. "Santana, are you all right? Puck must have given you an awful scare."

She reaches out, setting her fingertips on Santana's arm. The touch is an unconscious one on her part, Santana can tell, because as soon as she makes it, she stiffens, suddenly affronted by her own boldness. Even so, she doesn't pull away. She remains on, waiting for Santana to either reject the gesture or to accept it.

To accept her.

(Santana doesn't know what to make of Rachel Berry, who can be kind to even those persons who treat her despitefully and who never stays angry for too long—or at least not when someone stands in need.)

"I'm fine," Santana says, softening to Rachel's touch. "Really."

For the briefest second, Rachel seems as if she might challenge Santana's answer, but then she decides against it. Instead, she slings Puck another warning look and gently squeezes Santana's arm.

"I'm glad you're all right, Santana," she says kindly. With the matter settled, she retracts her hand and begins to walk away, heading over to where her father and the quadroon manservant sit beside the backstage fire.

When Santana thinks of how vehemently Rachel chastised her during the Independence Day spectacular in contrast to how genuinely Rachel cared for her just now, something in her heart snags.

"Rachel!" she calls out.

Rachel immediately pauses where she stands. She looks over Santana with her dark, sad eyes, hopeful and skittish and curious. "Yes?"

For once, Santana knows precisely what to say. "Just... thank you."

Rachel smiles, much shyer than she ever is on stage. "You're welcome," she says quietly, offering Santana a polite nod.

"I really didn't mean any harm, ladybird," Puck pipes up, pulling Santana's attention back to him.

With Rachel safely away, he reaches out, stroking at the curve of Santana's jaw, petting back a strand of her hair.

"The look on your face," he recalls. "It was like your heart had stopped."

"It did, a bit," Santana admits.

Puck has the decency to blush for Santana's word. He ducks his head. "Sometimes it's just hard to keep from looking—," he starts, wearing a most sheepish version of his idiot smile.

He doesn't manage to finish his thought, though—not before Brittany appears from the back of the big top, rushing into his and Santana's backstage area like a bolt of white lightning.

"Santana!" Brittany calls, breathless and pink-cheeked. "Are you all right, darlin'?"

She's just beside Santana in an instant, taking Santana by the wrists and checking her over from top to bottom. Her palms feel hot against Santana's skin, and she seems just as worried as if Santana were still in this very moment in danger.

"I'm just fine," Santana promises. Then, realizing that she must have just missed the knife throwing act, "Are you all right, BrittBritt?"

Brittany nods, "Yeah."

The two girls stare at each other, glad beyond speaking to find each other well, despite their recent brushes with real peril.

Santana hears Puck shift behind her. "Jesus Christ," he grumbles, annoyed with something. He turns away from Santana and Brittany and starts to wander off, muttering to himself.

(Santana doesn't know what has him so bothered, but she finds that she doesn't particularly care.)

* * *

><p>Brittany spends the remainder of the show in Santana's backstage area, and she and Santana stand with each other beside the big top, their hands knotted together and their heads leaned against the tent canvas, in line.<p>

Santana explains to Brittany what happened inside the tent, telling Brittany about how Puck waved his staff so close to her face that he might have almost singed her hair with the flame. Brittany's lips thin when Santana mentions that Puck allowed himself to become distracted, but she doesn't say anything disparaging against Puck; she just tells Santana again and again how glad she is that Santana is okay.

When it comes time for the grand exit parade, Santana and Brittany walk it together, with Brittany's father sitting out, nursing his hurt foot, and Puck and Rachel still too grateful for Santana's safety to deny Santana Brittany's companionship. After the girls emerge from the big top, Brittany says that she has to run along to help her father back to their tent and to herself change out of her costume. She promises to meet Santana at the mess pit for supper.

"Be sure to save me a seat, darlin'," she says before disappearing into the night.

(Retreating into the fairy country.)

Brittany isn't away for long; indeed, Santana only just has time to find a place in the mess pit before Brittany appears from behind the chuck, stepping into the firelight already clad in tatty blue. Brittany spots Santana right away and comes over to join her beside Puck. Sam isn't long behind Brittany, entering the mess pit with his family but choosing to sit with his friends once he finds them amongst the crowd.

Aside from at the matinee and evening shows, Santana and Brittany hadn't spent any time with Sam today and so hadn't had much opportunity to gauge his heartbreak. Of course he is still heartbroken, though in a quiet way. He wears his hat pulled down low about his eyes and smiles a much smaller, tighter smile than usual when he gives the girls his greeting. He keeps his back turned to the hearth. When Brittany asks him what the good word is, he just shrugs, having nothing in particular to say.

Since Santana didn't see Sam at either breakfast or lunch, she must suppose that he hadn't visited the mess pit today until now—a suspicion confirmed to her when Sam catches his first glimpse of Ma Jones from across the kitchen. As Sam goes to sit down on the grass, he happens to glance over his shoulder just as Ma Jones stands up from the hearth, carrying a cooking pot between two thick dishrags in her hands.

Ma doesn't seem to notice Sam, but Sam halts as soon as he sets eyes on Ma, stopped as if an archer had shot him through with an arrow. For a few seconds, Sam stays where he stands, watching Ma bustle her pot over to the spread upon the table. When she sets the pot down, she happens to look in Sam's direction. Santana can't tell if Ma sees Sam herself, as Mr. Evans stands up at that exact moment and removes his hat, signaling the start of the dinner prayer.

Whereas usually Mr. Evans prays some variation of the same prayer Santana heard him give on her first night at the circus, today he speaks different words.

"O Lord, bless this day our bread and vittles and open to us Thy hand. Uplift us in this, our time of need, and help us to prevail upon those who would seek to destroy us. Though Thy servants be at the mercy of pharaohs, plot our course through this wilderness. Let us not be destroyed by princes or powers. Lead us to that Promised Land. Please, dear Lord, heal our hearts and grant us sustenance. Give us hope in our differences, succor us in mercy, give to us a chance for renewal. In Jesus' name, amen."

Santana never has gotten into the habit of closing her eyes when Mr. Evans prays, so she keeps her gaze trained on Ma Jones and Sam throughout his invocation. When Mr. Evans speaks of healing hearts, she sees Ma Jones peek up, eyes deep and locked on Sam. When Mr. Evans asks that God give everyone a chance for renewal, Sam glances in the direction of Ma Jones, biting back a grimace.

As the prayer ends, Sam shoves his hat back on his head and Ma resumes her busywork around the campfire. If anyone else but Santana noticed their exchange, no one says anything of it.

(The circus is a place where everyone speaks freely of everything except for the most important things, after all.)

Eventually, Finn, Rory, Blaine, and Kurt come to join the group, sitting down with plates already in hand. Puck and Sam offer to fetch Brittany and Santana their meals. Everyone huddles together en masse on the ground, with Brittany beside Santana and the boys all gathered about them. Santana finds it very pleasant, keeping company with so many persons whom she finds, for the most part, agreeable.

When Rachel Berry arrives in the mess pit and starts making her plate, Santana sees her glance over to where the rest of the circus youths sit, a flash of circus-loneliness behind her eyes. Usually, Rachel takes her supper with her father and the quadroon manservant. She seldom associates with any of her peers outside of when they perform together during the shows.

But.

Seeing the loneliness in Rachel causes that same something from before to snag in Santana's heart. She thinks back to lunchtime, when she had herself wished that Puck's friends would notice her and invite her to share her meal with them. She thinks back to those long, silent days after Abuela died at the bachelor cottage, when she would take her breakfasts and lunches alone and wait with tremulous heart for Papa to arrive home for supper. A strange, belated sort of guilt grips her.

"Rachel!" Santana calls. "Come eat with us!"

The invitation stops Rachel in her tracks. She gapes at Santana and then seems to process what Santana just entreated her to do. Something shifts in her expression. Suddenly, the girl who can fill the whole big top with her voice looks smaller than anyone Santana has ever seen. She peeks up at her father, silently asking his permission to join the other circus youths for supper. Her manner is tentative, like she durst not allow herself to hope for anything, though she wants everything more than she could say.

(Rachel Berry is the girl who wants everything too much, but fears that she can't have it. Santana knows just the type.)

Mr. Berry glances over at the rabble sitting on the grass, his spectacles reflecting firelight. A smile quirks his mouth. "Enjoy your meal, _Rachelah_," he says, nudging the quadroon manservant to follow him as he leaves Rachel to the group.

As Rachel flutters over to join the crowd, Santana meets Brittany's eyes. Though Santana might expect Brittany to act a bit upset or at least confused at her behavior, Brittany doesn't. Rather, she regards Santana with a thoughtful expression—one that eventually shifts into a smile.

Only as Rachel starts to take a seat beside Brittany do the boys really notice Rachel's presence.

"Well, look who it is!" Puck says, scooting over a bit to allow Rachel space.

"You're eating with us?" Sam asks, surprised but not displeased by the new development.

Rachel for once seems at a loss for words, so Santana's speaks to save her. "I just thought it would be nice, all of us eating together," she says, shrugging.

"It is nice," Brittany agrees.

"Sure is," says Sam, but in a distant way.

He starts to get that look about him—the one of concentrated determination on something just beyond himself, the selfsame one that came over him just before he congratulated Ma Jones on her engagement and insinuated to Puck that Brittany could only ever marry Santana. He starts to stand up from the ground, leaving his plate behind him. Santana's heart speeds in her chest. What is Sam doing? There are rules, after all.

Sam ambles to his feet and stands up onto the toes of his clown shoes. "We all ought to eat together," he mumbles. Then, he starts to wave over the rabble. "Hey, Ms. Jones! Why don't you grab yourself a biscuit and come on over here? You outdid yourself tonight, and you ought to take a load off, just for a minute. We've got a seat for you! You can bring your Mr. Tinsley, if you like. Come be friendly with us!"

For the first time since yesterday, Sam wears his brightest dopey smile. He gestures emphatically to the ground beside him, as though it were a throne awaiting a queen to sit upon it. Santana understands what he's doing immediately.

_No hard feelings_, he means.

Many of the people around the mess pit look scandalized at Sam's appeal—and perhaps Ma Jones most of all. Her eyes widen and her mouth falls open. A full second passes before she recovers from her shock at Sam's overboldness. She rebuffs him with a headshake and tries to resume her scuttling around the kitchen.

Puck says, "What're you doing, you idiot?" and pulls Sam back down to the ground by his wrist.

Though Santana expects Sam to be disheartened that Ma refused his invitation to dine with the group, he doesn't seem put out in the least. Per Puck's coaching, Sam rearranges himself on the grass and makes no attempt to stand up again. He doesn't give up on his objective, though.

Instead, he starts to sing.

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
><em>_come out tonight, come out tonight?  
><em>_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

_As I was walking down the street,  
><em>_down the street, down the street,  
><em>_a handsome girl I chanced to meet  
><em>_Oh, she was fair to see!_

It's the same song Sam sang to Ma on the morning he rode up alongside the circus wagon on his horse, serenading her in front of her kitchen girls. Though Santana might expect Sam to sing it more sadly now than he did before, he doesn't at all; his voice is sweet, soft at first but then increasing in volume. Sam reaches over and taps Puck on the kneecap, encouraging him to join in the second chorus. Puck obliges him, and soon Sam's baritone and Puck's baritenor blend together, amiable and warm over the sounds of the mess.

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
><em>_come out tonight, come out tonight?  
><em>_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

_I asked her, "Would you want to dance,  
>want to dance, want to dance?"<br>__I thought that I might have the chance  
><em>_to shake a foot with her_

Soon others in the group start to notice the sing-along, and Sam gestures broadly like a conductor bringing his choir to performance. He wants everyone to join in with him, and he doesn't have to wait long before his fellows oblige. Rory and Finn start to sing, as well, and then, to Santana's surprise, so does Rachel Berry, her seraphic soprano soaring over the voices of the boys.

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
><em>_come out tonight, come out tonight?  
><em>_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

_I danced with gal with hole in her stocking,  
><em>_and her hip kept a-rocking,  
><em>_and her toe kept a-knocking  
><em>_I danced with a gal with a hole in her stocking,  
><em>_and we danced by the light of the moon_

When Sam first commenced singing, Ma Jones seemed entirely intent upon ignoring him, just like she did in the back of the circus wagon on that morning in St. James. However, the more Sam sings, the less Ma seems able to keep to her resolve. A smile starts to deepen the dimples in her cheeks, small to begin with but growing bigger with each subsequent verse.

Soon, Ma full-on grins.

The walls inside of her fall away, moldered to ruin in seconds. She sets down the washrag in her hands upon the table and shakes her head, feigning shame for herself, but the truth is that she couldn't look giddier or more pleased if she tried.

As Ma starts to walk over to the group, a great, happy feeling wells in Santana's heart. Though the logical part of her knows that this occasion isn't entirely without some underlying bitterness, for once, Santana feels only just one way in herself—just full of goodwill for her friends. As she and Brittany join in with the rest, sharing in the words and the tune, it strikes Santana as to just how perfect everyone's voices sound together. Their harmonies blend and strains combine, as pure and winning as those of any professional choir.

Brittany reaches over to take Santana by the hand just as Ma Jones arrives to join the rabble. Ma smiles at Sam, eyes full and deep and soft with something that Santana knows now by heart. Ma offers Sam a small wave, and he beams at her, still just as sweet on and proud of her as he has ever been.

For a second, Ma seems not to know where to sit amongst the group, aware of those rules she cannot break, though she already breaks some rules simply in coming over. Santana knows that feeling, as well, and reaches up on impulse, grabbing Ma's hand and motioning for Ma to take a seat at her side.

Though Santana expects Ma to perhaps resist the gesture, Ma doesn't. Seeming glad to have a place, she settles down beside Santana, their hands still clasped tight. Brittany follows Santana's lead and extends her free hand to Rachel. When Rachel accepts it, the girls find themselves all sitting in a chain—braided up like one of Blaine's garlands—Rachel beside Brittany and Brittany beside Santana and Santana beside Ma, all of them smiling.

Ma draws a breath and loans her pleasant thunder to the song.

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
><em>_come out tonight, come out tonight?  
><em>_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

For the final verse, Brittany and Santana meet eyes. They sing not just from their lungs or throats but from somewhere deep inside themselves. They grin at each other, hands twined and with red thread around their fingers, feeling something so much vaster and deeper and more eternal than themselves.

_I want to make that gal my wife,  
><em>_gal my wife, gal my wife  
><em>_Oh, I'd be happy all my life  
><em>_if she would marry me!_

_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,  
><em>_come out tonight, come out tonight?  
><em>_Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight  
><em>_and dance by the light of the moon?_

_Oh, we're gonna be happy, we're gonna be happy,  
><em>_we're gonna be happy, and dance!_

The youth of the circus finish their song but don't stop singing. They find new words and melodies. They sing again and again and louder and louder, huddled together with the girls' skirts and petticoats bunched under their legs and the boys almost on top of one another. They sing to the stars, their voices curling to join the campfire smoke—Kurt and Rachel and Ma plucking notes from the stratosphere, Finn and Puck and Blaine and Sam and Rory all in a rumble, Brittany and Santana at counterpoints. They sing until the night turns cold, until they lose their own voices in the strength of their collective strain, until everyone else has left the mess pit, until it's just them, just song.

(One.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Thank you so much to Dr. Ruth for giving so generously of her time, talents, and thoughtful consideration in betaing this chapter. She truly is a genius and makes the writing process so rewarding. Special, special thanks to Lu for being such an awesome translator, helping me wade through the Spanish in this chapter even when she herself was ill. Happy upcoming birthday, bb! Finally, I dedicate this chapter to the effulgent Tess, who celebrated her birthday earlier this week. May she have many happy returns.<strong>

**Also, for those who've asked, this is chapter 12/15. We're getting to the final stretch, guys.**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**"Claro, claro" : "Sure, sure"**_

_**¿Acaso Salomón en toda su gloria vistió como uno de éstos? : Was even Solomon in all his glory arrayed like one of these? [ref. Luke 12:27 Reina Valera Bible 1862 Ed.]**_

_**"¡Está mintiendo!" : "He's lying!"**_

_**perdona la niña, Madre, por favor : forgive the girl, Mother, please**_

_**¡Santana, no lo toques! : Santana don't touch that!**_

_**¡No le molestan, querida! : Don't bother him, sweetie!**_

_**fascinante : fascinating**_


	15. Birthday Girl

**Chapter 13: Birthday Girl**

**Thursday, July 7th, 1898: Elma, Iowa**

Santana can't sleep—not after parting from Brittany for the night with stolen kisses, "heaps and for keeps," and promises of tomorrow-tomorrow, all underneath a curtain of countless country stars.

The heat that seeped into her skin as she kissed Brittany earlier in the day settles deep in her belly and paints thoughts through her head about the touches she and Brittany plan to share before the next matinee. She remembers Brittany's kisses against her lips and along her jaw and nibbling her ear. She imagines Brittany kissing down her neck and at her shoulders, chest, and knees, and her heart jumps. She squirms upon her cot.

Puck makes animal noises where he sprawls upon his sleeping mat just off to the side of Santana, but she ignores him. For hours, she skims along the top of sleep, chasing after Brittany somewhere between thought and dreams, remembering each one of Brittany's smiles and trying to parse out all of Brittany's little jokes and mysteries.

A thousand Brittany-questions circulate her thoughts. What was Brittany's first circus performance like? Why does Brittany like the food on the Southern route so well? How did Brittany first realize that she liked Santana differently than how one would like a friend? Who gave Brittany permission to be so entirely wonderful at all hours of the day and night?

Santana replays her every conversation with Brittany from throughout the day in her mind, both the giddy and the somber. She thinks of Brittany's father's elixir. She thinks of the knife throwing act. She thinks of Brittany's mother. She thinks of Brittany with white light spilled through her hair at the peak of the afternoon. She thinks of all the things she would like to do to keep Brittany safe, to keep Brittany well.

(If she ever truly dreams, it's only of Brittany dancing her away into Fairy.)

For the longest time, Santana can hear the night outside the tent: the little cheeps and peeps of bugs and the wind rustling through the grass like a cat curling at human ankles. An owl calls mournful somewhere at the brink of the forest. Even the stars seem to reverberate in their celestial places. Though her body rests, Santana's mind and heart can't stay themselves. She waits for morning and waits for Brittany, her girl in secret blue and promise white.

She awakens to a kiss.

* * *

><p>It isn't a kiss upon Santana's lips—just on the back of her hand.<p>

It also isn't a kiss that Santana wants—it's far too wet and scratchy with stubble.

"'Morning, ladybird," Puck says, pressing his mouth against her hand again through the dark. "How about I bring you breakfast in bed? You could stay here, and I'd come back with hotcakes and coffee for you."

Normally, Santana wouldn't be opposed to going without Puck's company for a spell or to staying abed as long as possible, but today she can't seem to start her day fast enough; she wants to be to the mess pit and with Brittany as soon as she's able.

She wipes her wrist on her skirt, cleaning it. "That's all right," she declines. "Just let me wash my face and teeth, and we can go to breakfast together. I'll be not a minute."

Though Puck seems surprised that Santana would refuse his kindness, he doesn't question her decision. He nods and leaves Santana to herself, stepping outside the tent to give her her privacy.

As Santana washes her face and teeth and combs through her hair with her horsehair brush, she can't help but shiver with a certain sort of nervous excitement, both restless and eager to see Brittany all at once. Despite her promise to Puck, she takes a long while grooming herself, wanting to look her best for the day, though she knows that Brittany finds her beautiful even when she has bootblack on her cheeks.

It seems to take Puck a thousand years to tear down their tent. Santana stands off to the side of him, her arms wrapped around her waist. She must glance in the direction of the mess pit one-hundred times, wondering if Brittany feels even half as impatient as she does for their rendezvous.

"Got somewhere to be, ladybird?" Puck asks, leaning against the wooden frame of the tent, already denuded of its canvas.

Santana shrugs but doesn't reply. An answer remains unspoken upon her lips.

(She has someone to be with.)

* * *

><p>Breakfast smoke lingers lower than usual against the purple dawn, fogging the mess pit and forcing coughs and complaints up from the thick-throated company. The smoke clings to the humid air and needles at Santana's eyes until she finds that she must close them. She holds onto Puck by the elbow and bats at the smoke with her free hand as they make their way toward the spread. Around her, she hears utensils tin-clink upon plates and coffee cups thud, dull, against wood.<p>

"Over here, darlin'!"

At Brittany's beck, Santana opens her eyes and spots Brittany just upwind of the smother and seated at the table, two plates set before her and already fixed with food. Though Brittany smiles at Santana, she also flitters with butterfly nervousness, glancing from the plates to Santana and back again before looking to something else.

A vase with a purple flower in it set upon the table just between the two plates.

No.

Not a vase—the empty sarsaparilla bottle from Storm Lake.

Not just a purple flower—a coneflower like the one Brittany picked yesterday in the meadow.

Santana's heart all but collapses in upon itself in her chest, and she drops Puck's arm without thinking about it.

(It always surprises her that she can love Brittany more than anything else in the world and then suddenly love Brittany yet more still.)

"Brittany," she gasps, walking over to the table, her hand pressed to her heart. "When did you—? How did you—? What's all this for?"

Brittany offers Santana her shyest smile. She bites her lip. "It's for you," she says, gesturing for Santana to sit down alongside her. Then, with even a shyer smile, "Happy birthday, Santana."

"Happy birthday?"

"Happy birthday?"

The first question comes from Santana and the second from Puck, but they aren't the only ones to wonder. At Brittany's word, many of the people seated at the table—including Blaine, Finn, Rachel, Mr. Berry, and the quadroon manservant—all look up at Santana, suddenly curious about her.

It isn't Santana's birthday at all.

(It won't be for another month.)

Santana searches Brittany's face and finds the slightest bit of mischief just at the edge of Brittany's shyness. With anyone else, Santana would fret about not knowing what was in store, but with Brittany, Santana patiently waits for the reveal. Brittany wouldn't tell everyone that today is Santana's birthday if she didn't have a good reason to do so, after all. Santana meets Brittany's eyes.

_So it's my birthday, hm?_

When Brittany catches Santana's look, her smile changes balance. It shifts to mostly mischief and only a little shyness. "I just thought that the birthday girl ought to have a nice surprise at breakfast," she says in her lilting way.

"Shit, ladybird, you should have said something," Puck complains, chucking Santana's shoulder.

Rachel leans down the table. "Happy birthday, Santana," she says loudly enough for everyone within several yards of her to hear, including Ma Jones and the kitchen girls.

"Happy birthday," Blaine repeats, earnest as ever.

When Santana finally slides into her seat beside Brittany, she makes sure to sidle up as close to Brittany as possible, nudging their hips together and twining their ankles beneath the bench. She leans over to smell the coneflower—amber sweet, like pure honey.

"You are too much, Britt," she whispers, conspiratorial.

Brittany puts on her blank joker face. "Too much of what?" she asks.

Santana means to inflect some teasing into her voice, but somehow, when she speaks, her words come out soft and small, in the voice that only belongs to Brittany: "You know exactly what."

* * *

><p>Perhaps it's only Santana's imagination, but the company seems much chattier than usual this morning. After Brittany announces Santana's "birthday" to the table, everyone gets to talking, the boys about the fishing in Elma, Iowa—the circus' destination for today—and Rachel about how she's managed to achieve a heretofore unknown level of control over her head voice. Brittany and Santana listen in on both conversations but contribute nothing to either one; they smile secret smiles at each other and hold hands under the table.<p>

Santana couldn't feel happier if it were her real birthday.

When the meal draws to its close, Puck gathers up Santana and Brittany's plates along with his own and starts to reach for the sarsaparilla bottle, ducking around Santana's shoulder to grab it. "Say goodbye to your daisy, ladybird," he tells her, fingers closing over the bottleneck.

Santana rescues the bottle away from him with a single, quick swipe. "No!" she says sharply. "I want to keep it."

Puck flounders, opening and closing his mouth. "Ladybird—," he starts, faltering.

Santana knows that his objection is a practical one: preserving her "birthday gift" on the train ride will be difficult. She can perhaps keep the sarsaparilla bottle, if she wraps it in her old clothes and tucks it deep inside her valise. The flower won't store so easily, though. At best, it will only last the day. Puck isn't trying to be mean. Santana lets out a breath, relenting.

"I want to keep the bottle, at least," she amends. She sends a meaningful look to Brittany. "And if I had a book to my name, I'd press the flower between the pages and dry it. That way it would last for a long, long time."

"You could press it in my newspaper," offers a deep voice from down the table. Santana looks over to see Mr. Berry holding a folded copy of the Dyersville Commercial aloft. Mr. Berry extends the paper to Santana, wagging it once in his hand, enticing her to take it from him. Santana's shock at the gesture must show because Mr. Berry offers her a kindly look. "I've already read all I care to read of it," he shrugs, playing off his charity.

His expression is one of familiarity—warm fondness, even. He peers at Santana as if he knows her or at least knows something about her. At first, Santana thinks that Mr. Berry has decided to give up his paper for her because he feels obliged to treat her nicely on Rachel's behalf, but then she thinks his decision has to do with something else.

(Something deeper.)

"Are you sure?" Santana asks before she can stop herself.

Mr. Berry smiles at her, his spectacles reflecting firelight. "Happy birthday, _shaina maideleh_," he says, standing up to pass the newspaper to Santana around the quadroon's back.

Santana accepts the gift with a nod of deference. "Thank you," she says quietly.

As Mr. Berry waves off her thanks and sits down on the bench again, the quadroon manservant pats him on the back, beaming. Both men smile, not just at Santana but at Santana and Brittany. For an instant, Santana wonders if she may have missed something in the exchange, but then Brittany motions for Puck to hand over Santana's valise, and Santana finds herself involved in the task at hand once more.

"Make it quick," Puck instructs, setting the valise down on the bench.

Santana mostly ignores him, taking her time to secure her things. First, she cushions the sarsaparilla bottle within her valise, rolling it up in the folds of her nightdress. Next, she sets the coneflower down between the pages of Mr. Berry's newspaper. Brittany kneels on the bench beside Santana, leaning on her elbows. She looks on with interest as Santana flattens the coneflower and smoothes its petals, choosing a place for it at the center of the paper.

_T... D... C..._, Brittany mouths out, reading the capital letters in the newspaper's title to herself.

Santana's heart flutters in her chest.

(Brittany always gives her the most thoughtful gifts.)

By the time Santana finishes securing her things, Shane Tinsley, Finn Hudson, Matt, and some of the other supes have already begun clearing away the blue canopy and unoccupied benches, tearing down the mess and loading supplies into the back of a waiting circus wagon.

"I'm going to bus our plates and give these fellas a hand," Puck says. "You ladies go on ahead to the wagon bay. I'll catch up to you."

* * *

><p>Santana and Brittany link elbows as they leave the mess pit. As they walk, they trade sly grins with each other, electric with the same energy that kept Santana awake through the night. Only after they break away from the throng and find themselves separate from everyone else does Santana lean in close to Brittany.<p>

"You know today isn't my birthday, right?" she teases.

Brittany shrugs, as matter-of-fact, as ever. "I figured it probably wasn't," she says.

Santana laughs. "So what's all this about?"

Brittany wears her shy smile. She shrugs again. "I just kind of want today to be perfect for you," she says softly, her voice flitting along like it always does, hopping from one phrase to the next like a bird from branch to branch. "You make me feel like something special is happening all the time, and I wanted you to feel that way, too. I wanted to start today with something special, but I didn't know how to do it without making everyone curious about what we were up to. Then I remembered that we're having a surprise party, and then I started thinking about what could happen if it were your birthday. I know Ken won't give you the day off or anything, but I thought that maybe everybody would treat you nice today if they felt like they had a good reason to. It's just a little thing, I know, but it was the best I could think to do, and—"

"It's perfect," Santana says, her invisible string giving a tug in her chest. "It's circus magic, and it's perfect."

With everyone's attention diverted elsewhere—to Santana's "birthday"—Santana and Brittany will be free to show each other an especial amount of attention, and in plain sight of the whole company, too. Puck won't notice a thing, and neither will anyone else. Not only is Brittany's plan brilliant, but it's also impossibly sweet and thoughtful, as well.

"Thank you," Santana says, squeezing Brittany's arm. Then, "You do make everything into something special, Britt. Everything's wonderful when I'm with you."

Though Santana can't yet see vivid colors under the darkness of the morning, she can still sense it when Brittany begins to blush. It starts with a headshake, Brittany curtaining her face with her hair, and ends in Brittany's silent, self-conscious laugh. For a few seconds, Brittany and Santana walk along in silence, but then they come up upon the wagon bay and Brittany seems to have one more thing to say before they rejoin the company.

"Last night, I couldn't stop thinking about everything," she admits, candid. "I was so excited for today, and then Daddy kept needing help because of his foot, so I barely slept a wink, but I don't mind. I feel so awake, I could dance."

By now, Santana is more than accustomed to feeling two ways at once about things. In fact, she almost expects to have it happen. Even so, the intensity of these particular two-way feelings surprises her.

On the one hand, Santana feels almost overcome with adoration for Brittany, grateful, happy, and even strangely relieved to know that Brittany's excitement for today matches her own. On the other hand, when Brittany mentions Mr. Pierce's injury, Santana feels a stab of dread drive deep into her and twist, for she suddenly remembers how much danger Brittany will be in at today's shows. Before she can stop herself, Santana takes firmer hold of Brittany's arm.

"Britt," she says, drawing them to a halt upon the grass. She waits until Brittany meets her eyes and then wets her lips, steeling herself. She knows that she's about to overstep a boundary but feels too much concern to hold her tongue. "W-what if you lost your father's elixir? W-what if you hid it?" When she sees Brittany about to speak—maybe to protest—she hurries, "It wouldn't have to be forever! It's just—it's just that that elixir isn't good for him. It's not real medicine. He shouldn't take it. If you pretended the elixir had gotten lost somewhere between here and our next stop, it would buy us some time. W-we could find your daddy a real doctor—someone who could really help him. We could help him."

Santana has never tried to advise Brittany concerning Mr. Pierce before, mostly because she realizes that it isn't her place to do so. No matter how much Santana loves Brittany, family business is family business. From her own experience, Santana knows that it's nearly impossible for an outsider to look in on someone else's family and to understand precisely what she sees in it.

(Blood runs so deep.)

Something trembles inside Santana, and she wonders if Brittany won't resent her for meddling in affairs that aren't her own. At best, she expects Brittany to politely decline her suggestion. At worst, she expects that Brittany will be cross with her for saying too much.

Brittany never does exactly what Santana expects, though.

Instead, Brittany fixes Santana with a queer look, almost as if she's trying to see through the early morning darkness, past the silhouette of Santana and into the very depths of her. Her eyes flicker between Santana's own, and she starts to walk again, leading Santana along at her side.

"Okay," she says just as she and Santana step beneath the shadows of the outer circle of wagons.

"Okay?" Santana repeats, amazed that Brittany would take her at her word without either question or complaint.

Brittany's eyes fill with something—a knowing, like the way the tides know the list of the moon or the earth the thrill of daybreak heat or the constellations their patterns in the night. Evenness spreads out over Brittany's look, permeating her bearing and breathing, enlivening her. Suddenly, Brittany seems to make a conscious decision, choosing to put her whole faith in Santana's word. She nods again, sure.

Since the day when they practiced the knife throwing act in the woods, Santana has known that she trusts Brittany completely and with her whole life. However, it only now occurs to Santana that the trust runs both ways—that Brittany trusts her just like she trusts Brittany, and, moreover, that Brittany trusts her more than anyone or anything else in the world, even more than Mr. Pierce or the goodness of people.

The realization steals Santana's breath away. She feels both entirely undeserving of Brittany's confidence and reverenced to have it and also like something sacred has happened without her knowing about it at first. She has Brittany's entire future in her hands—Brittany has given over to her fully and without flinching.

It isn't a reflexive choice on Brittany's part, and neither is it involuntary. Santana saw it in Brittany's expression.

Brittany has chosen to trust Santana above anyone or anything else.

(Something of Santana has nestled itself deep inside Brittany and made its home there, connecting the two girls in a way that has something to do with invisible strings and thread rings and above all their sweet, sacred, shared love.)

"I'll hide it," Brittany says solemnly. "It'll be a secret."

"A secret," Santana repeats.

For the briefest instant, the two girls meet eyes, and something passes between them like the still, unfathomable moment just before a knife throw. Though part of Santana wonders if she didn't just give Brittany bad advice, she doesn't have the opportunity to speak her doubts aloud before she and Brittany step out from beneath the morning shadows and Blaine starts hollering for them to join him on a nearby wagon.

Almost at once, the spell breaks, the gravity of the moment dissipating like the great letting out of a held breath.

* * *

><p>Santana worries that the seriousness of her recent conversation with Brittany will mar their morning together, but it doesn't.<p>

In fact, if anything, Santana feels even closer to Brittany now than she did before she suggested that Brittany hide Mr. Pierce's elixir, almost as if the invisible string that runs between her and Brittany's hearts has become shorter over just the last few minutes, connecting them even more closely than before.

Brittany seems to sense the closeness, too, and revel in it. She begins smiling again almost right away, as soon as she and Santana find themselves at the back of the wagon, abuzz with the rapt sort of giddiness that comes from having a happy secret.

As the girls sit nestled in the back of an old box wagon, Blaine and Rory just across from them and hay scattered beneath their skirts and feet, Brittany holds Santana's left hand between both her own, petting over Santana's knuckles. She curls around Santana in the dark, smiling into Santana's shoulder.

_Hi_, she breathes.

_Hi_, Santana breathes back, tickled by Brittany's touch.

They meet up with Puck at the depot and join him in a boxcar along with Blaine, Rory, and some sideshow freaks.

The same humid air from the mess pit has followed the circus all the way to the train; it causes the wooden floors of the boxcar to feel soft and clammy, of the same consistency as a used teabag, hours old. Puck coaxes Santana into the crook of his arm, fitting her body against his where he leans against the boxcar's corner. Santana coaxes Brittany's head into her lap, resting it in the sling of her skirt.

When the train first heaves forward along its tracks, Santana feels a flutter in her belly. Brittany smiles up at her as if she feels it, too. Though she and Brittany have yet to even kiss once today, Santana's body acts as if they had already kissed one-hundred times all in a row, her heartbeat drumming strong through her bones. Her insides feel slick and keyed for something. She squirms where she sits, not sure what to do with her stoked feeling in such a time and a place as this one.

"You all right, ladybird?" Puck asks, leaning over to press a kiss to her hair.

Santana swallows, nervous that Puck might somehow guess what she's thinking of, though she knows that he couldn't possibly do so. She strokes her hand through Brittany's hair. "Yes, thanks," she says, her words short and clipped.

Puck doesn't seem to mind Santana's curtness if he notices it. He kisses her head again, smiling his idiot smile into the kiss, and Santana focuses on the act of combing her fingers through Brittany's hair, gently breaking its little knots with her fingers. She makes long, slow strokes, starting at Brittany's scalp and moving down to the end of each lock.

When Santana's thumb brushes over Brittany's temple, a blush rises to Brittany's skin, not just at her nose and ears but over her neck and collarbones as well. When she meets Santana's gaze, her pupils have expanded to fill almost her whole eye.

"May I braid your hair, Britt?" Santana asks quietly.

"Anything you like, birthday girl," Brittany says, her eyes closing.

Santana starts to separate Brittany's hair into three strands, carefully parting it. As she strokes through the locks, Brittany almost purrs, her body entirely tuned to Santana's touch. Santana works for a long, long time, until the first rays of morning light catch the gilt in Brittany's blonde through the open car door. Santana weaves and resets, weaves and resets, counting along to the hard, happy beat of Brittany's heart.

* * *

><p>By the time the train pulls into Elma, the sun has already risen, and sluggish warmth pervades every nook and corner of the town, creeping in, reptilian. The wooden planks on the depot platform heat the undersides of Santana's bare feet, as does the earth and the grass, even in shadows. The world is green in every direction, with lush trees and messy grasses that sprawl and spread like uncombed hair over the ground.<p>

Once the supes put the circus vehicles in order, Puck asks Santana and Brittany to join him on a landau, along with Sam and Stevie Evans. The girls, of course, oblige him. It only takes a few moments for the circus processional to travel from the depot to the town, emerging through a natural tunnel of trees onto the main road.

Elma seems poorer than Dyersville or Independence did before it, more country and less town. The shop fronts are to a one made of wood, and many of them hurt for new coats of whitewash. One building reads RESTAURANT, another STORE, and another TOWN HALL. The citizens line the streets wearing overalls and calico, not nearly as gussied up as some of the other Iowans for whom Santana has seen.

Despite the modesty of their circumstances, the people of Elma appear thoroughly excited at the prospect of hosting the circus for the day. They stand along the sidewalks, whooping and hollering to see the clowns, jugglers, and acrobats. When Deborah lets out a bugling bellow, the crowd cheers and claps for her, shouting for her to do it again. Jesse St. James' lions roar and the citizens shriek with delight. Many people wave at members of the company as the processional goes by, with some of the little children even blowing kisses to Santana, Brittany, Puck, Sam, and Stevie seated atop the landau.

A group of little girls in bonnets starts up an impromptu chorus of "Hip-hip-hurrah! The circus is here!" just as the landau moves close to them, and Brittany gives Santana a tug on the sleeve.

"Come on, darlin'," she says, gesturing that Santana ought to follow her down onto the road.

The girls clamber off of their perch, paying mind not to snag their skirts on the mud flap as they go. The landau's slow pace allows them to disembark at will and they alight upon the ground already at a jog. The dirt underfoot seethes with heat, so they both move along on tiptoe, taking staccato spider steps and trying to stay in the shadow of the wagon.

Santana's bangle bracelets glint in the white sunlight, refracting rainbows upon her blouse and in the air. Reds, yellows, blues, greens, and violets stretch before her eyes in flaring prisms. Brittany takes hold of Santana's hand, dancing and then running her along.

At first, Santana doesn't know the reason for Brittany's haste, but then the girls catch up to Blaine and Rory turning somersaults at the flank of the landau. Brittany makes a quick lunge forward, a laugh bubbling up from the back of her throat, and seizes Blaine's wrist with her free hand, connecting him to her and Santana in a chain.

When Blaine flashes Brittany a quizzical look from beneath the brim of his trilby hat, Brittany shrugs in Rory's direction, gesturing for Blaine to take Rory's hand in turn. Though he doesn't seem to understand Brittany's reasoning, Blaine's painted face turns up into a lopsided grin, and he does as Brittany tells him to do, snatching Rory's hand into his own, adding a fourth person to the chain of three.

Brittany wears her widest cat-smile for Blaine's deference. She calls out to the boys still on the landau, "Down here, fellas! Come dance with us!" At first, Puck looks reluctant to heed Brittany's call, and even Sam seems a bit wary about what's going on, but Brittany persists in her entreaties. "We can't have a circle if you don't lend your hands," she says.

When Blaine and Rory join Brittany in hollering, Puck and Sam can't help but relent.

"Come have a dance!" Blaine shouts.

"Don't be bashful!" Rory teases.

Sam cracks the ghost of his old sunny smile. He shakes his head, amused, and starts to help Stevie down from the wagon bed to the street, taking the little boy under the arms and moving him as easily as if he were a sack of ingredients meant for Ma Jones' kitchen. Puck rolls his eyes but gives in just the same as Sam does, leaping down onto the road with aplomb.

Soon Santana finds herself linked to Puck on her right side and Brittany on her left, with Brittany holding onto Blaine, Blaine onto Rory, Rory onto Sam, Sam onto Stevie, and Stevie onto Puck. The group moves in a weird circle, listing both forward and in a round at the same time. Once they develop a steady rhythm, Brittany starts to singsong.

_Ring a ring a rosie,  
><em>_a bottle full of posie  
><em>_All the girls in our town  
><em>_ring for little Josie_

It doesn't take long before Blaine and Stevie start to say the rhyme along with Brittany, and then Puck, Sam, and Rory, all in turn. Santana would like to join in with the group, as well, but she finds that she doesn't know the words to the song. Though she has heard of "Ring around the Rosie," she has never actually played it with anyone or learned the words from any of her books.

With some embarrassment—and a vague sense of wistfulness that things might have happened differently in her life—Santana realizes that the song is of the kind that children teach to one another on schoolyards and in nurseries.

Not wanting to feel left out, Santana listens in more closely to the rhyme, repeating every fifth word of it, laughing as the task of trying to memorize a new song and dance at the same time starts to make her clumsy. She trips into Brittany's side, and Brittany grins at her, enunciating the words more clearly so that she can follow along.

_Ring a ring a rosie,  
><em>_a bottle full of posie  
><em>_All the girls in our town  
><em>_ring for little Josie_

The little children of Elma revel in the simple show, laughing and running down the street to follow the dancers in the procession. On the third pass, a new someone joins in the dancing—Rachel Berry, catching up to the group from a ways back down the road. She fits herself in between Puck and Santana, asking for permission with her eyes before fully entering the circle. When Santana nods at Rachel and makes a space for her to fill, a smile blooms upon Rachel's face. She sings a harmony to the group.

_Ring-a-round a rosie,  
><em>_a pocket full of posies  
><em>_Ashes! Ashes!  
><em>_We all fall down_

The same goodwill Santana felt toward her friends last night during supper wells up again in her heart. Until this summer, Santana hadn't any friends to teach her schoolyard games. Until this summer, she hadn't any friends at all.

After another turn, Kurt appears, using his juggling batons to part Sam and Rory's hands so that he can squeeze between them. Kurt wears a close-lipped smile, covering his teeth with his lips, and seems very delighted by the whole proceeding. Tucking his batons under his belt, he clasps hands with the boys on either side of him and starts to sing the same words as Rachel. His new lyrics confuse Rory and fluster Sam, who responds to the interruption by picking up the pace of the dance until the circle turns almost at a run.

A rush of dizziness washes over Santana, and she closes her eyes, feeling sun on her face, Brittany's hand in hers, and so much adoration for the youth of the circus that she can barely repeat the song for laughing so loudly.

After another spin, Rachel and Kurt's lyrics prevail. Everyone sings:

_Ring-a-round a rosie,  
><em>_a pocket full of posies  
><em>_Ashes! Ashes!  
><em>_We all fall down_

At the final word, Sam, Puck, and Kurt all lean down with all their weight, holding hard to the hands in their grasps, dragging everyone slowly down onto the road with them. Santana collapses in stages, falling first to her knees and then in a heap, tangled up in Brittany and Rachel and laughing so raucously that tears fill her eyes. Were her skirts not so thick, her fall might have hurt her. As it is, she feels as if she's fallen into bed. Brittany laughs beside her, golden, golden, golden.

"Come on," Sam coaches, scrabbling to lift Stevie off the road and urging everyone else to stand up with them. "Let's get out of the way before we burn ourselves on this dirt or the next wagon runs us over."

In the next second, Puck's hands fit to Santana's waist, and he helps her to her feet. He does the same for Rachel as Blaine helps Brittany. Santana feels another rush of dizziness when she meets eyes with Brittany from an upright position.

The braid Santana wove into Brittany's hair on the train has come almost entirely undone, and the flush in Brittany's cheeks and the brightness of her eyes speeds Santana's heartbeat. Under the flare of morning light, Brittany looks as romantic and striking as a painting by Messrs. Courbet or Géricault.

"How was it, birthday girl?" Brittany asks, breathless.

Santana can only smile out her answer.

_Swell as swell can be._

* * *

><p>At the game's conclusion, Santana piles back onto the landau along with Brittany, Sam, Stevie, and Puck. Soon afterwards, the circus diverts from Elma's main street, turning down a country lane. The white city rises in the distance, constructed on the banks of a dirty, brown creek. It takes a while for the processional to wade through the tall, thick grasses between the road and the clearing, and several of the shorter wagons stall in the brush along the way.<p>

While some of the company members jump down from their vehicles to walk the remaining distance to the wagon bay from the road, Brittany, Santana, and the boys lounge on their landau, waiting to disembark until the last possible moment.

"That's a branch of the Wapsipinicon River—same one that was in Independence," Puck tells Santana, leaning over to point out the creek's pathway through the trees.

Santana smirks and nudges Brittany. "You think this part of the river has frogs, too?" she asks.

Rather than responding to Santana directly, Brittany smiles and sets a hand on the back of Stevie's head, mussing his hair from across the way. "I dunno," she says, putting on a silly voice. "I think we should toss this fella into the creek to check for us."

Stevie protests at once, ducking away from Brittany's hand. "No! Send Stacey in instead! Or Sammy!"

Though Sam hears Stevie's suggestion, he hardly seems fussed about it. He shakes his head, placid, and sinks back against the edge of the landau, covering his eyes with his hat. While Sam isn't as plainly forlorn today as he was on the day when he first had his heart broken, he certainly still isn't back to his usual upbeat self. He shrugs rather than smiles.

"It isn't up to me," he says matter-of-factly.

"Then who's it up to?" Stevie asks.

Sam shrugs again, subdued. "I suppose it's up to Ms. Santana," he decides. "After all, I've heard it's her birthday today, and that means she ought to get the say, don't you think?"

Stevie looks up at Santana, wide-eyed. "You won't throw me into the creek, will you?" he peeps, from the sounds of it already convinced that she will.

Santana has never spoken with a little child before—and especially not one with such a vested interest in what she has to say. She finds that she isn't precisely sure how to react to such a small, precocious person, and especially not one who seems so entirely serious about something so entirely silly.

Stevie doesn't look exactly like Sam does, but he does look enough like Sam that Santana can't help but feel some affection for him just by association. He has delicate features, like his and Sam's mother, a smattering of freckles, and a wide, expressive mouth. He stares at Santana like he's an accused criminal and she's the queen with the power to either pardon him or send him to the gallows.

Santana glances at Brittany for reassurance and finds Brittany wearing a cat-grin, thoroughly entertained by the whole exchange. Brittany gives Santana a nod, encouraging her to say what she will.

Santana swallows. "Well," she says slowly, "I would like to know about those frogs—"

"Oh, please, Ms. Santana, no!" Stevie begs.

Santana grins, "—but I wouldn't want to make you get your feet all wet on my account or have your mother cross with me, so I guess we'll just have to listen for the frogs from the banks. What do you say?"

"I say you're the nicest person there ever was!" Stevie cries, clapping his hands with as much enthusiasm as if Santana had actually issued him a royal pardon.

Before Santana can protest, Brittany interjects. "Isn't she just?" she says earnestly, fingers brushing over Santana's wrist. She flashes Santana an approving look just as the landau draws to a halt upon the grass.

"She is!" says Stevie, and, in the next second, he throws himself forward, wrapping his arms around Santana's waist and burying his face at her shoulder.

Santana immediately flinches, not because Stevie hurt her in any way but because he caught totally unawares; it panics her to have him so suddenly attached to her. She doesn't know what the rules say about situations like this one, but she very much feels as if she's done something wrong.

Heat rises to her cheeks. Stevie looks so pale against her dark skin. She holds her hands out to the sides, unsure as to whether she should extricate herself from Stevie's grasp or wait for someone to save her.

"Whoa, now, little man!" Puck protests, starting to reach for Stevie. "Be careful with my missus—"

He doesn't have the chance to either finish his statement or make Stevie move away before Brittany intervenes.

"My turn," she says gently, tapping Stevie on the shoulder as though she were cutting in at a down day dance. She smiles as Stevie peels away from Santana's body. "May I?" she asks, waiting until Santana gives her a nod before inserting herself in Stevie's former place, wrapping her arms around Santana and giving Santana a squeeze from the side.

It's a quick embrace, just long enough for Santana to absorb some of the heat that hides in Brittany's hair and radiates from her skin. Even so, it's enough to make Santana feel instantly calmer. She starts to breathe again.

Brittany retracts and offers a smile to Stevie. "It's good manners to ask before we put our arms around someone," she says, informative but not chiding.

"That's right, buddy," Sam says, motioning for his brother to follow him down from the landau.

"Okay," Stevie agrees, chipper, committing the new rule to memory.

In the next second, everyone begins to rustle, starting to disembark from the wagon, but Santana remains transfixed, watching Brittany. As Puck and Sam help Stevie down to the grass and send him off to find Mrs. Evans, a curious feeling blooms in the pit of Santana's stomach, spreading all the way to her chest. Santana doesn't understand it—she just knows that it has something to do with how gently Brittany treats small things. It makes Santana want to give Brittany gifts.

(Precious, delicate—the kind that one can't buy in stores.)

Brittany catches Santana's look and blushes for it. "He didn't mean any harm," she says, just so. "He's a good kid."

"He is," Santana agrees.

(What she really means is something else.)

For a second, Santana and Brittany smile at each other, suddenly shy, but then Brittany laughs her silent laugh and starts to shuffle toward the end of the wagon. "I wish Mr. Halberstadt could have been here to make a photograph of your face when Stevie grabbed you," she teases, gesturing for Santana to go ahead of her on the wagon bed. When Santana obliges her, Brittany continues, "You looked like he was pinching you instead of giving you a hug."

Santana's mouth falls open, and she scoffs, prepared to defend her reaction, never mind the truth in Brittany's words, but she doesn't have the opportunity to speak on her own behalf before Puck interrupts, reaching over to grab her by the waist and help her to the ground.

"She just doesn't like strange men making improper advances on her, is all," he says confidently, taking the opportunity to brush dust from Santana's shirtsleeves.

He couldn't possibly have guessed how well his joke would go over with Santana, Brittany, and Sam, who laugh and laugh, savvy.

* * *

><p>Santana had expected, or maybe just hoped, that Puck would sidle off after helping her and Brittany down from the landau. She had also expected, or very much hoped, that she and Brittany would have the opportunity to sneak away from everyone as the company dispersed to do their morning work.<p>

Neither one of her expectations comes to pass, though.

Instead, the company congregates around a particular flatbed cart, shielding their eyes from the morning sun with their hands and the brims of their hats. Mr. Adams occupies his usual perch atop the cart, already casting a dark shadow over the crowd, even so early on in the day. A familiar figure stands at his side: Roderick Remington, clad in a navy morning coat and the smuggest smirk that Santana has ever seen.

Mr. Remington holds onto his coat by the lapels and puffs out his chest, surveying the company in the same way that a boy in possession of a quarter-dollar might survey a barrel of penny sweets at a general store. He squints mightily against the daylight.

At the sight of him, something hardens in the pit of Santana's belly, turning to stone. Her fists ball at her sides. Puck, Sam, and Brittany seem to notice the company's congregation and the presence of Messrs. Adams and Remington at the exact instant that Santana does.

"Shit," Puck says, gesturing for his friends to follow him to the edge of the crowd.

The group scarcely reaches its destination before Mr. Adams clears his throat to quiet his employees. He waits for the company's chatter to die away, wincing for reasons that have nothing to do with brightness. For a split instant, he looks incredibly vulnerable, his eyes as sad and pretty as Arthur's. He rubs at his side under his jacket, as if massaging an old wound.

Once he has the crowd's attention, he speaks.

"Friends, you remember Mr. Roderick Remington of the Associated Press," he says, his voice tired and frayed around the edges but still loud enough to carry over the wagon bay. "Mr. Remington has returned to our encampment for the purpose of collecting more notes to aid in the composition of his article concerning our circus, which he is in the process of editing for publication.

I do not need to remind you that we here at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie hold Mr. Remington and his work in the highest esteem. I'm sure I can count on you, my dear friends, to show your kindest hospitality to Mr. Remington and to answer whatever questions he would ask you with the politeness, modesty, and forthrightness that the public has come to expect of our company. I'm sure that Mr. Remington will collect the information that he requires with no trouble at all! He'll feel of our Christian kindness and see our wholesomeness plainly written in our actions and our words.

Join me in welcoming Mr. Remington back into our midst! We're so very honored to have him with us—more honored than we can say."

Though Mr. Adams speaks in the imperative, Santana has never heard someone do more in the way of begging than he does now. For once, he seems less like a lion and more like a man at the mercy of one. He daren't breathe until the first patter of applause starts from the back of the congregation, and, even then, he scans the crowd, searching out every pair of hands, checking for enthusiasm behind the action.

Santana claps, though she isn't at all pleased to have Mr. Remington back at the camp, and Brittany, Sam, and Puck do the same as she. They all clap—the whole company—but with no jubilation or eagerness to their ovation at all.

(They just can't like a man who would double-cross the circus.)

"We'd all just do best to steer clear of that low-down, gilly son-of-a-bitch," Puck mumbles to his friends, casting a distrustful glance at Mr. Remington on the flatbed.

Santana is about to state her agreement when it happens.

Mr. Adams calls her name.

"Everyone to his work now!" he commands. Then, almost as an afterthought, "And if Mrs. Santana Puckerman is here, I need to see her right away."

Santana halts where she stands.

Since her arrival at the circus, Santana has spoken to Mr. Adams precisely once and come into direct contact with him only twice. Though his turn as ringmaster made her like Mr. Adams very much, she still hasn't any desire to speak with him in conference—and especially not when he sounds so decidedly stern.

Santana meets eyes with Brittany, hoping that Brittany might somehow know why Mr. Adams wants to speak with her. However, she finds only her own nervousness mirrored in Brittany's expression, with parted lips and worried eyes. Puck and Sam seem similarly startled and caught unawares. In fact, everyone around Santana stares at her with a mixture of concern and curiosity made plain upon their faces.

All at once, Santana feels the same hobbling dread she used to feel on the rare occasions during her childhood when her father would raise his voice at her.

(Briefly, Santana wishes that she could hide in her grandmother's clothes closet now like she did back then.)

Santana shrinks, wanting to sink into the earth.

"Go on, ladybird," Puck says, his voice wary through he chucks Santana's elbow in encouragement. "You don't want to keep him waiting."

Brittany gives Santana one long look in concurrence with Puck. She pets over Santana's wrist, both for reassurance and to tell Santana that she'll wait behind for her. Though Santana very much wishes that Brittany could hold her hand all the way up to the flatbed cart or at least give her a good luck kiss before she goes, she knows that she must both go alone and go now, as Mr. Adams called for her and no one else and will want her to hurry along.

With a nod to Brittany, Santana sets off, the congregation parting around her to allow her through to the front. As she walks, she wracks her mind, trying to recall anything she might have done to get herself into trouble with Mr. Adams recently.

Maybe the boy to whom she told an unfavorable fortune yesterday in Dyersville complained of her to Ken afterwards. Or perhaps Mrs. Schuester finally ratted Santana out to their superiors for making such a pert riposte in the dressing tent at Ackley. Or, heaven forbid, perhaps Mr. Remington told Mr. Adams that he caught sight of Santana with her hands and lips all over Brittany Pierce between two derelict tents on the Glorious Fourth.

It only now occurs to Santana how very many rules she breaks on any given day at the circus.

(Foolish, foolish, foolish!)

By the time Santana reaches her destination, Mr. Adams has leapt down from his perch; he stands on the grass, waiting for her, Mr. Remington and Ken flanking him.

"Mrs. Puckerman," he says, giving her a curt nod, "won't you step over here with me to have a word?" He gestures to where the first row of tents stands at the edge of the white city, just a few yards away from his and Santana's current position.

"O-of course, sir," Santana says, remembering to mind her accent for Mr. Remington's benefit.

Santana allows Mr. Adams to lead her into the shadow of a tent just far enough away from everyone to ensure some privacy. A tremor starts in Santana's jaw, and she bites her lips into her mouth, trying to still it. Knotting her hands, she waits, fully expecting Mr. Adams to reprimand her, at best, or to fire her, at worst.

"It came to my attention," Mr. Adams says gruffly, "that you have been the victim of a theft."

At first, the words don't register, and Santana still feels on the edge of panic, like an awful calamity will befall her in the next instant. Only when Mr. Adams continues to speak does Santana realize that he hasn't accused her of any wrongdoing—and also that he doesn't mean to either harangue her or dismiss her from the lists.

"It took longer than I would have liked to have a replacement set of cards brought in for you, but that's because they were imported from Ontario. I'm told they're of the finest Italian design—Dotti, if you're familiar," he explains, reaching into his jacket to produce the deck from the pocket of his waistcoat.

The cards come wrapped in violet velvet and tied with a silk rope. Mr. Adams extends them to Santana with a word of caution.

"I trust I don't have to tell you that these cards are not so very inexpensive, coming first from Europe and then from Canada, correct? Please do make sure to keep an eye on them. I don't want this set to disappear, do you mark?"

Santana cowers. "Yes, sir," she says, accepting the cards when Mr. Adams hands them to her.

She hopes that Mr. Adams will excuse her now, but he doesn't.

Instead, Mr. Adams casts a glance over his shoulder at Mr. Remington and Ken, the former leaned up against the flatbed cart on a lazy elbow while the latter speaks in a hushed, excited tone about something or other, making animated gesticulations. Mr. Adams fixes Santana with a grave look.

In a low voice, he says, "I also trust that if our esteemed guest should ask you to give him a reading today on the midway, you shall oblige him with all readiness and no funny business about the matter, correct? I trust that you will tell him all about what I'm sure will be his most profitable and agreeable future, won't you, Madame Rossetti?"

"Y-yes, sir. Of course," Santana stammers, agreeing on impulse.

Mr. Adams regards Santana for a second longer, checking her for that same unnamable something that everyone seems to seek in her but only one person ever seems to really find. After a second, Mr. Adams straightens up.

"That's a good girl," he says, more to himself than to Santana. He nods to Santana and then quits her company, walking back toward Mr. Remington, calling out in salutation. "Old fellow! How about I introduce you to my head clown, Mr. Evans? He trained under Dan Rice, you know—Mr. Dan Rice, who campaigned to become president!"

Santana turns the tarot deck over in her hands. She durst not unloose the rope to look at the cards. She can't—not when she knows that Death awaits her, hidden in with the rest. She gulps, her throat suddenly very parched. So intense is her focus on the object in her hands that she doesn't notice someone coming up beside her.

"Hey, ladybird," Puck says, appearing at her side. His eyes sweep over her and he finds the tarot deck in her hands almost immediately. "Oh! You got yourself a new deck of cards? Shucks! Give 'em here, and I'll put 'em in our tent before I head out."

"Head out?" Santana repeats dimly, disoriented by the sudden turn of events.

Puck nods, taking the cards from Santana's hands. He already holds her valise and his rucksack. "I've got business to attend in town again today," he says, a note of pride in his voice, the source of which Santana doesn't know. He ducks down, pressing a kiss to Santana's hair. "You behave yourself while I'm gone, and try to steer clear of Mr. Big City Reporter, if you can help it. I'll see you later, all right?"

"Sure thing," Santana mumbles, remaining rooted to her spot as Puck turns to leave.

While Santana likes the idea of Puck making himself scarce for the day, she still feels off-kilter, knowing that she might have to read cards later on at the fair. Her mind swirls with thoughts of tarot cards and mountebanks and dislike for Mr. Remington. Somehow she had forgotten that the Death card would come back to her.

_(No se puede eludir la Muerte, Santana. Viene para todos.)_

Only with great effort does Santana manage to tear her eyes away from where Puck once stood. She feels several minutes behind the times, like she's still stuck in the instant when Mr. Adams presented the cards to her. She shakes her head and looks out over the wagon bay, searching for the one sight that she knows can bring her back to the present.

Sure enough, Brittany walks toward Santana, hurrying over the grass, cloud shadows and light bathing over her in alternation, putting her first in chiaroscuro and then the whitest white. Her hair drinks in the sunlight, and she comes right up to Santana, like warm waves to summer shores.

"What did Mr. Adams say?" she asks, knitting herself to Santana's side, their hips fitting in close together. She pets over the bones in Santana's arm with the edge of her thumb. "Are you all right, darlin'?"

Brittany scans Santana's face in the same way one might scan a page for a particular passage in a very familiar book, going more by shape and feel than by word. Her own expression remains tight and concerned, and she bites at her lower lip and furrows her brow, serious because Santana is so.

"He, um—," Santana starts, but she doesn't have the chance to say one word more.

"Santana Puckerman!" calls a distant and familiar. "If Mr. Adams is done with you, you best get to my kitchen! I got potatoes that need attention, and your lazy self is just the one to give it to them!"

When Santana turns to find Ma Jones waving at her from the edge of the wagon bay, she all but deflates. She and Brittany had plans. Brittany seems to share Santana's sentiment because she chimes in right away.

"May I come along, too? I can pay attention to potatoes," she offers, taking a step forward.

Ma seems amenable to Brittany's offer, Santana can see it in the lightness of Ma's expression, but Ma doesn't get the chance to claim Brittany for the kitchen before someone else interrupts—namely, Mrs. Schuester, appearing from out of the dissipating crowd.

"Oh no, you don't, Brittany Pierce! I need you in the dressing tent sorting fabric swatches today," Mrs. Schuester shrills, marching forward with her skirt hiked up around her ankles. "I want you to divide them up by color and by size so that I can use them to mend holes in the clowns' costumes come this weekend." When Ma's, Brittany's, and Santana's faces fall, Mrs. Schuester smirks. "I'm certain that Mrs. Puckerman can handle those potatoes quite adequately on her own," she says, her voice dripping poisoned honey.

It had been three days since Mrs. Schuester had last dared to speak to Santana and Brittany, and Santana can't help but feel that she's only doing so now to spite them—to keep Santana and Brittany apart because she wants them to be miserable. Whereas Ma Jones genuinely wants Santana's help, Mrs. Schuester only wants to punish Santana and Brittany for defying her in Ackley. She sneers at Santana and Brittany's dumbfounded expressions.

Brittany lowers her eyes, defeated. "Yes, ma'am," she mumbles.

Ma Jones raises her eyebrows, silently asking if Santana won't come along to the kitchen with her now. Santana nods at her in deference. "Coming, miss," she says dully.

Santana and Brittany share one last long look, crestfallen not only to have their plans dashed but also to have to part from each other in a moment when Santana very much yearns for Brittany's comfort and both of them know it. Brittany bites her lower lip, frowning.

"I'll see you at lunch," she says softly.

"'Kay," Santana says, equally soft.

Her hand traces down Brittany's. For the briefest instant, their fingers tangle together, and red string slips against red string.

"No dallying, Brittany!" Mrs. Schuester huffs.

Brittany rolls her eyes before turning to answer the summons. "Coming!" she calls.

(Sometimes Santana can't help but wonder if she and Brittany will ever be able to make a plan without someone or something interrupting it.)

* * *

><p>Santana first notices the weirdness in Ma Jones as she and Ma walk along to the mess pit together.<p>

Normally, Ma would march in front of Santana, leading the way and grousing should Santana start to dawdle, but today Ma walks at Santana's side, hanging close to Santana, as if she and Santana were two small boats tethered together upon the water. Their shadows lap and overlap upon the earth, intermingling and swallowing each other up at intervals, with Ma becoming Santana and Santana becoming her and then both of them becoming something new as one.

Every now and again, Santana glances over to find Ma glancing at her. Ma wears an expression that Santana can't read, partly melancholic, partly shy, and partly veiled. Whenever Santana meets Ma's eyes, Ma quickly looks away, skittish in a way that Santana has never known her to be before.

Santana doesn't know why Ma seems so interested in her today—whether it's because of something she herself has done or something that's happened to Ma.

It surprises Santana when, after instructing Santana about how to check each potato for rot, Ma Jones actually sits down at the kitchen table across from Santana and joins her in doing the work. Ma doesn't say anything more to Santana than what she's already said, but she does meet Santana's eyes. Her expression asks a quick question.

_Is it all right if I stay here with you?_

It comes as a shock both that Ma would ask Santana's permission to do anything in her own kitchen and that Ma would want to sit with Santana rather than with the kitchen staff, per her usual druthers.

Santana glances at Ma's girls where they gather on the other side of the mess pit, chopping vegetables and kneading biscuit dough for lunch. They chatter so frivolously, silly and oblivious. Ma's eyes flicker with something; if Santana didn't know better, she would say it was nervousness that Santana might turn her away.

It occurs to Santana that when she first joined the circus, she wanted so very much for Ma Jones to like her.

Has she gotten her wish?

When did Santana become the type of person whose company Ma Jones would like to keep—the type of person whose company Ma Jones would prefer to that of her own kitchen girls? Who would have ever thought that the mighty Ma Jones would supplicate before someone like Santana, a newcomer to the circus? After all, Ma Jones has been at the circus since she and Brittany and Sam were small; Santana has been here only just two weeks, and Ma Jones has never much liked her until now.

All at once, Santana remembers what happened last night during supper: the way she and Ma Jones held hands while the circus youths sang to the stars. She remembers how Ma clung to her and wouldn't let go, nails pressing half-moon prints into the flesh of her palm, grip tight to keep linked in the chain.

It was Brittany who first showed Santana how much good just one outstretched hand can do.

Santana glances as the tin ring on Ma Jones' finger. Her heart squeezes in her chest, and she offers Ma Jones a small smile.

_Stay as long as you want to._

Ma Jones smiles at her in return.

* * *

><p>Santana and Ma work in a kind of silence all their own, pretending not to pay notice to each other though they most certainly do just that. Ma is much faster at her sorting than Santana is, but she doesn't seem to mind Santana taking her time. Every now and again, she'll glance up at Santana, checking to see that their arrangement is still amenable. She won't smile with her mouth, but her eyes shine, dark, deep, and grateful.<p>

The girls' task is simple, though tedious: they toss the good potatoes inside a burlap sack leaned up against the table and the bad potatoes into an aluminum cooking pot on the tabletop, a makeshift rubbish bin for the time being. Hot starch smell pervades the air; the older potatoes feel spongy and porous to the touch.

It doesn't take long before Ma Jones starts to hum a tune, at first aimless and then growing into something recognizable.

_Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight...?_

She keeps her eyes downcast and doesn't speak the words aloud—only makes the melody deep from her chest and the back of her throat. Though the song is usually lively and gay, Ma puts it in a heartbreak key, turning it into something mournful.

Once she starts humming, she doesn't dare look at Santana directly or say aught to her; she just hums and hums from somewhere low inside her body, making it through all four verses and the choruses between.

Her voice never wavers but resonates thick with an audible melancholy. Her song soldiers along, following until the end, until she makes the last of her work. At the final note, Ma tosses a last potato in the aluminum pot and rises from her place.

At that moment, she seems to return to herself.

"Happy birthday, Santana," she says quietly, her gaze still trained to the table. "You can go wash up before lunch now, if you like."

(Santana feels an ache.)

* * *

><p>By the time Santana washes her hands in the tub at the back of the chuck, Ma Jones has already rung the lunch bell and people have begun pouring into the mess pit from all corners of the camp. Whatever quiet yearning had seized Ma while she and Santana worked alone together has gone away; Ma is back to her usual self, shouting orders at her kitchen girls and fussing at anyone taking up too much space around her hearth.<p>

(Ma Jones reacts to heartbreak by running ever faster, trying to do more and more to put it in the dust behind her.)

Santana searches the incoming crowds for Puck but doesn't find him. She searches the incoming crowds for Brittany and finds her right away.

"How was sorting fabric squares?" Santana asks, joining Brittany in the lunch line.

Brittany rolls her eyes. "Mrs. Schuester is cross with me because I can't tell the difference between polka dots and regular dots," she says, shrugging. "They're too confusing. How was paying attention to potatoes?"

Santana laughs at Brittany's joke. "Not so bad," she says truthfully.

Brittany nods, glad to hear it. "And what about Mr. Adams?" she asks, lowering her voice to a whisper. "I didn't get you in trouble with him, did I?"

Santana scoops a spoonful of creamed corn onto her plate. She waits for Brittany to do the same before answering.

"You didn't get me into trouble," she mumbles, "my curse did."

She gestures at Brittany to follow her away from the table out onto the open grass where they can sit at a distance from everyone else.

"Mr. Adams ordered me a new set of cards from Canada, and they arrived in the post today. He told me that he doesn't want any funny business. He wants me to do readings. He doesn't know that I can't read cards without drawing Death every time. He doesn't know that I kill people—"

"You don't kill people," Brittany says adamantly.

There's something almost like anger in her voice, not at Santana but at the very idea that anything about Santana could be wicked or wrong. It's as if Brittany can see the devil perched upon Santana's shoulder and she wants to scare him away in the same way one would a strange dog from a yard or a child's nightmare from the darkest recesses of a room.

Brittany motions for Santana to sit down beside her on the ground, and, once seated, both girls set their plates aside. When Brittany looks at Santana again, she does so wearing a most serious expression, her brow furrowed and her eyes the same sort of blue that dances in the hot heart of a fire.

"You don't kill people," she repeats, her voice softer though no less adamant than it was before. She reaches up to thumb along Santana's jaw. "Cards are just cards," she says. "We all make our own ways in life."

"Britt," Santana whimpers, eyes starting to fill with tears.

She wants to believe what Brittany tells her—she wants to believe that cards are only cards and that everyone makes his own fate—but she runs up against that same wall inside her that always prevents her from thinking anything good about herself. She feels something ripping in her chest, perforating like a sheet of paper torn down the middle.

In her mind, she sees her grandmother's face, eyes hard and filled with hatred. She sees her father putting on his hat and coat, wishing her goodnight at the door to the bachelor cottage for what would be the last time. She sees card after card laid out upon the table. She sees the old gardener, Mr. Bradley, and the young millionaire, Mr. Hammond. She sees Death in his cloak, his skeletal face laughing at her each time she makes the spread.

If she reads for anyone—whether it's Mr. Remington or some other patron—that person will die.

Brittany's expression turns even softer. She strokes over Santana's jaw again. When she speaks, she seems to do so around a lump in her own throat. "You read for Mr. Fabray, darlin', and he's still all right. Even if he weren't, it wouldn't be your fault, though." She reaches up, moving her hand close to Santana's face. "Be still," she whispers, and, then, with the gentlest touch, she plucks a tear from the curve of Santana's eyelash, catching it before it can run down Santana's cheek.

She moves slowly so as not to startle Santana and then smiles not in a happy way but rather to plainly state that she doesn't suppose that Santana could ever do anything truly insidious or harmful to anyone, whether it were on purpose or not. Everything about her manner says that she doesn't believe in Santana's curse one whit. She wipes Santana's tear upon the grass.

Another sad smile.

Then.

Brittany draws her palm to her mouth, pressing a kiss to it, and reaches out, touching her hand to Santana's face. Her stroke is so tender that Santana could be made of glass and Brittany would hardly leave a fingerprint upon her. The stroke is also sure, deliberate and unflinching. Brittany's pupils expand to fill her eyes, dark against tiger flecks and starlit blue. She allows her touch to linger, a ring of heat at the center of her hand surrounded by lesser heat. The kiss seeps into Santana's skin.

It's a small signal and one that no one will see from across the mess pit. It's secret and private, plainly not precisely what Brittany would like to do in this situation, though also the best she can do for now. Santana feels the kiss as though it were real. She shudders under Brittany's touch.

For the briefest instant, she does believe that she is good—that she can be good—because Brittany believes in her. For the briefest instant, she does believe that cards are only cards because Brittany tells her so, and Brittany would never lie to her or do anything to hurt her.

Warmth spreads out through her chest.

"Maybe I won't have to read cards today anyway," she says, clinging to that hope.

"Maybe you won't," Brittany agrees.

Briefly, both girls hesitate, their eyes reading each other's faces. Brittany looks from Santana's eyes to her mouth and back again. Her breath hitches, but she hangs. Santana does the same. Behind them, they can hear the babble of voices, the clatter of plates, the movements of five-hundred souls, all of them too near and present to permit them to do as they please. Brittany and Santana's hands twine upon the grass, their fingers messy together but their grips strong. It isn't precisely what they would like to do, but it will do, and it's enough.

Santana feels safe, moored.

Her one sure thing has her and will never let her go.

* * *

><p>Puck doesn't rejoin the company for lunch, and he isn't inside the tent when Santana collects her things for the morning fair. What business could keep him away from the circus and in Elma for so long, she wonders? Whatever it is, she hopes that it will whisk him away again after the matinee—that it will occupy him long enough to allow her and Brittany their rendezvous.<p>

Santana goes along slowly to the midway, clutching her new cards, tambourine, and peacock-colored tablecloth. When she sees that someone has repaired the marquee outside her gazebo so that it once again reads "MADAME ROSSETTI, GYPSY FORTUNETELLER: Reader of Both Palms and Tarot Cards," she blanches and tries desperately to repeat Brittany's reassurances in her mind over and over again like a prayer.

_Cards are just cards._

_We all make our own ways in life._

_You don't kill people._

_Maybe you won't have to read today._

But Santana does have to read.

It happens just as if someone had written out a script depicting her nightmares: Mr. Remington appears at the head of her queue almost as soon as the fair bell rings, holding the lapels of his coat and wearing his arrogant smirk.

"Madame Rossetti," he says unctuously, "so good to see you again. As I recall, the last time I visited the circus, I approached your table too late and didn't have the opportunity to observe you practicing your arts firsthand. I made sure to get here early today to remedy that situation. I see from your sign that you've added a new trick to your repertoire—you read tarot cards now, do you not? I'd be most obliged if you were to give me a reading so that I might report to my loyal readers concerning your prowess."

Santana gapes at Mr. Remington, half-convinced that his request is some sort of awful joke. Her heart squeezes into her throat. She chokes.

Mr. Remington seems to mistake her dumbfoundedness for something other than what it is. "Oh, pardon!" he apologizes. Then, "I—would—like—you—to—read—my—cards—good—woman," he says, very loud and clear.

All of a sudden, Santana feels dizzy and a thousand different ways at once: sick to her stomach, flustered, unwilling, compelled, angry, hopeful, and wary, among so many other things.

If Santana reads cards for Mr. Remington, then Mr. Remington will die. But maybe he won't die. Maybe cards are just cards. But maybe a curse is just a curse.

Mr. Fabray hasn't died yet and Santana read his cards eleven days ago. Then again, Abuela didn't die for a full month after Santana read her cards, and Papa didn't die for several weeks after Santana read his. They both died just the same, in the end, though.

Death comes for everyone, after all.

Maybe Mr. Fabray will die sometime in these next weeks. Maybe Mr. Remington will die, too, if Santana reads for him. Maybe Santana will die—be kicked out, dismissed, sent away—if she refuses to read for Mr. Remington. Mr. Adams made it very clear that he expected Santana to read for Mr. Remington if Mr. Remington asked her to do so.

Santana doesn't like Mr. Remington and hates what he's done to extort the circus and besmirch its reputation, but she most certainly doesn't want him dead—and especially not because of something she's done to him. She looks up to Ken, helpless, wondering if he might save her again today like he and Kurt saved her on the midway in Ackley.

But he doesn't.

He can't.

Ken won't even meet Santana's eyes; he keeps his back turned to her, his thick arms crossed over the bulb of his belly. He stares off down the midway. Rules are rules are rules, even for him. If Mr. Adams says to treat Mr. Remington like a lord and king, Ken is obliged to do so just as much as Santana is, no matter how much either one of them dislikes it.

Santana's voice comes out hoarse and feeble. "Of course, sir," she says through her grandmother's accent, gesturing for Mr. Remington to take a seat before her.

She sweats under the heat of the day, and when she reaches for the cards at the corner of her table, they feel inexplicably sharp against her fingers, like knife blades. She sets the deck down before Mr. Remington.

"Please, you shuffle?" she says helplessly, her stomach knotting in tight upon itself.

Mr. Remington looks vaguely pleased at her request. He reaches for the deck, turning it expertly between his fingers, showing all the dexterity and skill of a career gambler. He smirks as he riffles the cards between his palms, the crowd around him pressing in to observe his technique.

"You cut the deck into three parts," Santana says, wringing her hands beneath the tablecloth, where no one can see her do it.

Mr. Remington nods. "Of course, Madame. Of course," he says.

Santana swallows and swallows but can't seem to wet her throat. Once Mr. Remington has parted the cards and handed them back to her—a first stack, a second, and a third—she sets them out upon the table, drawing a deep breath to steel herself.

"This card is you, sir," she says, drawing from the middle stack.

It's the last safe card that Santana will draw.

The Four of Pentacles.

Usually, Santana's strange humor doesn't start to overtake her until she's actually begun the reading, but today it passes over her quickly, like the first flickers of an electric storm crackling in the clouds above a field. It's dark and kinetic, and Santana can't tell whether it comes from within her or without.

_Cards are only cards_, she tries to remind herself.

Santana doesn't dare to look upon Mr. Remington's face as she draws the first three cards—representations of Mr. Remington's self. She lays out the Ace, King, and Three of Pentacles and in them sees a preoccupation with wealth and a rise to power. With some bitterness, she thinks that she could have told Mr. Remington those things about himself without aid from the cards.

(If only he had asked her for a palm reading instead.)

The next column represents Mr. Remington's immediate surroundings. In it, Santana finds Mr. Remington in a state of flux and dealing with the Hierophant—a man who is pillar in his community and who bridges heaven and earth.

Beyond these surroundings, Santana wanders into Mr. Remington's dreams, where she discovers yet more pentacles and treasure-greed interspersed with hope for luck and success, a desire for personal happiness, and glory shining from the corona of the Sun.

More pentacles—coins upon coins—appear strewn throughout what Mr. Remington knows concerning himself, and then comes the King of Swords, a ruthless figure.

Nothing so far shocks Santana.

Since Mr. Adams read the advance article to the company, Santana has known that Mr. Remington is a cruel, greedy man, preoccupied with his own personal gain and reputation. She has known that he's doing business with Mr. Adams. She had known that he would return to the circus.

The knot in the pit of her belly tightens, pulled taut.

For a fleeting instant, Santana wonders if this reading won't prove harmless after all—if it won't only tell her secrets about Mr. Remington that aren't really secrets at all.

But then she finds the High Priestess enthroned in Mr. Remington's unknown. And then the Lovers in his immediate future. And then the Devil.

And then Death.

This Death is multicolored, a skeleton with his anatomy highlighted in brilliant blue, red, yellow, and white. He leans upon his unwieldy scythe as a farmer would lean on a shovel, his spine hunched and his shoulders curled in exhaustion. He appears hand-drawn and hastily painted but still both vivid and menacing at once.

He's the last card in Mr. Remington's immediate future, and after him come the Ten and Seven of Swords and the Two of Pentacles—portents of violence, a quarrel gone wrong, all of Mr. Remington's greed and worldly concern for naught in the end.

Santana grips the tablecloth as she sets the last card in the spread. She swallows but can't seem to work her throat. She had forgotten to narrate her actions as she laid down the cards on the table and now she feels the weight of Mr. Remington and the crowd's attention heavy upon her. They want to know what the cards mean and also, undoubtedly, why Santana suddenly seems so pale and short of breath.

"Madame," says Mr. Remington, "won't you tell me my future?"

For the briefest instant, rage wells inside Santana.

She wants to stand up from her seat and shout at Mr. Remington for his avarice and dishonesty, telling him that the sins of his heart will lead him to his death. She wants to scream at him that he was a fool to come to her—a fool to return to the circus!—and that he should have left well enough alone and never treaded the midway pitch, not when his only intention in doing so was to take advantage of Mr. Adams and the company. She wants to yell until he understands that circus magic can be dangerous, that he has no idea what his meddling has done, that circus magic can be dark and great and that it sometimes hides things that have good reason to remain hidden.

Most of all, she wants to tell the man to run, to hide himself, to lock his person away somewhere and pray for his own soul day and night.

But of course Santana knows she can't do any of that.

Mr. Remington will die now that Santana has laid his cards.

_La Muerte viene para todos._

Santana finally meets Mr. Remington's eyes, helpless to do anything to save either him or herself. Since she doesn't know when Mr. Remington will meet his end, she supposes that she must give him the most favorable reading possible for the sake of his article. In the event that he survives to press time, she wants him to write a favorable review of her work.

"Sir," she says, her voice frayed like old string, "you have laid out plans so that you might obtain riches and successes. The cards tell me you are shrewd and ambitious. They tell me you, how we call it, have dealings with powerful persons. I see here," she points to the Lovers, situated in the column that represents Mr. Remington's immediate future, "that you shall have romance." She moves her finger to the next column, solutions. "And here you shall make financial gai—"

"But what about this?" Mr. Remington interrupts, pointing to the Death card. He squints at Santana, daring her to say something of it.

"Is nothing," Santana tries. "I'm sure you just have short time with us at the circus, is all."

Mr. Remington smirks at Santana. "Are you certain, Madame?" he asks, quirking his brow.

He knows that Santana is lying—or at least that she's sidestepping the truth—Santana can see it in his face. The rules say that Santana must not lie to a man like Mr. Remington and especially not when he asks her a direct question. A bead of sweat slicks down Santana's wrist under her bangles. She swallows again to no avail.

"Sir," she says hoarsely, trying to work out how she should phrase the bad news. "The card is—"

When she falters, Mr. Remington seems almost delighted by her failure. He sneers like an animal that's just sensed a weakness in its prey. From out of his coat, he produces his reporter's ledger and pencil. He makes note of something, jotting his memo with a flourish.

"The card is Death," Santana whispers.

Mr. Remington nods and adds something to his note. When he finishes writing, he restores the ledger and pencil to his coat pocket and leans in close to Santana from across the table, as if he is about to tell her a secret.

"Madame," he says, "it's quite all right. I realize that your employer probably wouldn't like to know that you drew me such an inauspicious card, but you have nothing to fear from me. I like a woman with some nerve—and you have some nerve drawing such a card as this one for any patron, let alone such a distinguished one as myself." He winks at Santana and stands up from the table, straightening his morning coat, chuckling as if Santana had just told him a joke. "I don't mean any rudeness, but, to be most honest, I don't believe in your hocus-pocus anyway," he proclaims. "Your reading hasn't upset me."

The crowd around Mr. Remington has a good laugh at Santana's reading, and Mr. Remington drinks in the attention they pay him, glad to have it. He gives Santana a stiff nod before making his exit from her booth onto the midway; several of Santana's patrons follow after him as he goes.

Once Mr. Remington disappears from sight, Santana casts her gaze upon the cards on the table, checking over them again as if they were an arithmetic problem that simply doesn't add up. Looking on them, she feels a sense of foreboding that extends far beyond anything having to do with Mr. Remington or this one spread in particular.

She stands in the ruination of the flaming Tower, the Devil in the long shadow at her back, Death at her side like an old friend. Somewhere, the High Priestess laughs at her, keeping secrets. She doesn't know what any of it signifies—only that she dreads the cards now more than ever.

(What does it mean when a sham of a fortuneteller tells her fortunes true?)

* * *

><p>Santana spends the remainder of the fair in a daze, feeling as uneasy as if she hung suspended between the swings on the flying trapeze. One moment, she clings to Brittany's words—to hope that Mr. Remington won't die because she drew him Death. The next, she finds herself dangling from a slipperier bar, knowing that, of all the persons for whom she's read cards so far aside from Mr. Remington, only one of them is still alive today.<p>

Santana's grandmother, who knew so much about cards and curses and devils, swore on her deathbed that Santana could not read tarot without causing death, but Santana's true love, who knows so much about life and trust and Santana herself, has promised Santana that she's not to blame for what happens when she reads and that there's no fixed course for the world anyhow.

When Santana is with Brittany, she doesn't feel anything but good and whole.

But then there are the cards and four graves dug into the earth only after Santana laid Death on her table.

She reads three palms after Mr. Remington quits her gazebo, telling three rambling fortunes, each one more nonsensical than the last. All the while, she feels overheated and beleaguered, like she has a fever in her head. She must seem very unwell, for Ken doesn't even shout at her on account of her poor performance. He hustles down the midway after the show bell rings.

"Come on, little missus," he grunts, leading Santana over to where Mrs. Schuester's girls wait with their baskets full of flowers and multicolored veils, "we've got a show to put on. You hurry up and get your things." He pauses for a second, chewing on some notion. Under his breath, he mumbles, "I'll tell Miss Pierce to wait for you in the ring," and then waddles away in the direction of Brittany's backstage.

(For the second time, it occurs to Santana that Ken might actually be good at his job.)

It's the promise of Brittany that spurs Santana to move. She feels as if she's treading water—like Mr. Fenimore Cooper's Harry Mulford—only able to keep her head above the waves for hope of imminent rescue. Brittany is her girl in a lifeboat.

She collects a stem of fragrant bergamot and a green kerchief from Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses and finds herself a place at the back of the line leading inside the big top. The show bell has yet to ring, but she still feels rushed, pressured. Though she's done it a dozen times successfully before, she can't seem to tie her veil correctly today. She becomes so engrossed in her task that she doesn't notice Rachel flanking her until the last minute. Rachel sets a hand on her arm.

"You're knotting that so tightly that Mrs. Schuester will have to cut it off your head with sheers," Rachel warns, reaching out to stop Santana before she can make any more trouble for herself.

Santana's first reaction is to flinch away from Rachel and say something curt to her, but she stops herself short of doing so, remembering how very small Rachel seemed last night upon receiving an invitation to dine with the other circus youths. A balance has shifted between the two girls. If they're to be friends now, Santana knows that she must learn to accept Rachel's critiques as Rachel's way of showing concern. Santana softens and lowers her hands.

"Sorry," she mumbles.

Rachel shakes her head, kindly. "Here," she says, picking apart Santana's handiwork with her fingernail, separating fabric from fabric until the knot loosens. She gives Santana a look somewhere between reproving and pitying and refashions the cinch herself.

"Thank you," Santana says dumbly.

For the briefest instant, Rachel's eyes light as if Santana has just given her a special gift, but she quickly shakes it off, downplaying Santana's gratitude. "You're welcome," she says sensibly. Then, switching thoughts, "You wouldn't happen to know where your husband is, would you?"

_I don't have one_, Santana thinks at once and very nearly says so aloud, only to stop herself at the last instant.

She swallows.

"No," she says. "Why? Isn't he supposed to be with the fellas?"

"He's supposed to be," Rachel says, standing on tiptoe to look out over the backstage area, "but he isn't and Sam is worried that Ken will have some very harsh words for him if he shows up late to a performance today, what with Mr. Remington in the audience and all."

Until today, Santana had never considered that Puck's absences from camp could possibly have an adverse effect on her—for the less she sees of Puck, the happier she tends to feel—but now she wonders what might happen if Puck does skip out on a performance.

Mr. Adams made it abundantly clear that any employee who stepped out of line would find his employment immediately terminated, and Santana can't imagine that Puck would be exempt from that mandate, no matter how well Mr. Adams seems to like him. If Puck loses his job at the circus, then Santana would undoubtedly lose her job at the circus, too. And if Mr. Adams casts Puck out, then Santana will have to go with him.

Nerves flutter in Santana's belly.

(Not for the first time, she very much regrets tying herself to Puck with no way to set herself free from him.)

Rachel is too short to see over the backstage area even when she stretches, but Santana isn't and so takes to tiptoes herself, wringing her hands and wondering where Puck could possibly be.

She knows that Puck spoke to Mr. Adams before he started making his daily disappearances from camp, which means one of two things: either Puck asked Mr. Adams for permission to leave camp according to his own desires or Mr. Adams commissioned Puck to leave camp, perhaps on official circus business. Santana hopes that this latter possibility is in fact that case, as Mr. Adams could hardly fault Puck for showing up either late or not at all to a show if Puck had been detained running errands for the circus.

"Where are you?" Santana frets, watching around the curve of the big top for any sign of a freshly shaven head or the top of Puck's fire staff.

She never sees Puck coming.

But she does feel his hands on her shoulders as he swoops in from behind her.

"Excuse me, ladybird," he says in a rush, the heat from his body washing over her as he ducks into the backstage area, dripping sweat and without his gear satchel.

He moves like a flash flood, coursing in from nowhere and planting a quick kiss to Santana's hair before carrying on his way, swinging around Santana on the side in his hurry to join the other knights going into the ring. He isn't wearing his black shift, like he ought to be.

"Noah, where have you been?" Rachel nags. "Santana and I have been sick with worry for you! You missed the morning fair and you nearly missed the show bell! Where are your things? Didn't you notice the time?"

Santana expects Puck to blow Rachel's interrogation off with crudeness or a brainless excuse, but he doesn't. Rather, a look of panic crosses his face like a rabbit bolting over an open field. At first, Santana can't figure out what about Rachel's questions has Puck so scared, but then Puck's eyes shift, and suddenly Santana realizes that it isn't Rachel's questions that Puck fears at all.

It's her.

Santana herself.

For whatever reason, Puck doesn't want to speak freely in front of Santana. His gaze darts between Santana's face and Rachel's. He swallows, mustering some false bravado. "It don't concern you, nosy!" he snaps at Rachel, hurrying away before Rachel can complain about his meanness.

At that exact instant, the show bell rings.

Rachel looks indignant but neither especially hurt nor surprised by Puck's short answer. "It's not like him to show up late to a show," she mutters. She fixes Santana with an inquisitive look. "He hadn't told you what he was up to?"

Honestly, before today, Santana hadn't cared enough about Puck's mysterious disappearances to much consider them—she only felt grateful to have Puck away from camp during the day, affording her uninterrupted time with Brittany—but now she can't help but wonder what sort of business it is that Puck has in town and why he seemed so nervous to answer Rachel's questions in her presence.

Does Puck have something to hide from Santana?

She doesn't have time to consider the possibility before the queue starts to move and she and the other women file into the big top to join the opening sketch.

* * *

><p>Entering the darkness of the big top feels almost like slipping underwater into oblivion; it steals Santana's breath and puts panic into her, as if she were drowning.<p>

Only when Rachel takes hold of Santana's arm does Santana feel righted, like she suddenly has a keel and can keep herself going in a single direction.

All the same, it isn't until Santana spots Brittany standing near the back of the ring that the tightness in her chest finally dispels.

(Brittany seems to have been waiting for her.)

Though her invisible string tugs at her heart, Santana refrains from running to Brittany straightaway. Her own eagerness holds her at bay, like she wants Brittany too much to do anything for it. She separates herself from Rachel with a nod of thanks but remains where she stands, poised just on the peripheries of shadow along the back of the tent, waiting for Brittany like dry earth waits for rain.

Brittany doesn't disappoint.

She hurries over to Santana with sure steps, following the curved shadow along the inside track of ring until finally she meets Santana just at the border of darkness. Before Santana can even say anything, Brittany wraps her in a deep embrace, gathering her in and burying her face in Santana's neck. Windswept-campfire-apple-sweet fills Santana as she breathes against Brittany's skin. The band begins to play at just that instant.

Santana breathes.

"You look like you had a not-so-good fair," Brittany mumbles, rocking back and forth and swaying Santana with her. Her hold on Santana is sure and safe.

"I didn't," Santana says.

Part of her doesn't want to admit anything beyond that, doesn't want to say that she drew the Death card for Mr. Remington, for fear of somehow making the situation both realer and worse. Shame nags in the pit of her belly. Her grandmother's deathbed shouts play and replay in her mind.

_Maldita._

_Malagüera._

_La niña tiene un poco del Diablo._

"Britt," she pouts, "Mr. Remington, he came to my booth, and I— I—"

"You didn't do anything wrong," Brittany says, intuiting what Santana can't bring herself to say.

Brittany's voice is pervasive through the dark. Certain. She pulls Santana in more tightly, ignoring the music and the sketch going on around them. Her hands remain linked at Santana's back, and her ribcage moves against Santana's, the bones spreading and contracting, a liveliness in her pulse. There's something urgent in her.

"I didn't mean to, Britt," Santana confesses, throat turning thick.

Brittany doesn't respond right away; she holds Santana and dances them as if their little lifeboat were swaying on the sea. Her embrace is both firm and insistent, like she somehow means to impart her belief in goodness to Santana through touch in the same way one might share fire by touching two lighted candlewicks together.

Vaguely, Santana becomes aware that the knights at the fore of the ring have begun to make war. She allows Brittany to peel back from her somewhat, so that they both stand looking into each other's eyes, their arms still wrapped around each other. Brittany wears a concerned expression, her brow slightly furrowed and her mouth down-turned into a frown.

There isn't a smidge of judgment in her look, though.

She no more believes that Santana has a curse now than she did when Santana first told her about the curse in the field outside Mankato, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

"You know you're the sweetest person, don't you?" Brittany says, nudging her hips up against Santana's. "It worries you just to think you've done wrong, even when you haven't. Mr. Remington is still all right, Santana. He's alive and well as well can be. I'm sure he's up in the bleachers right now. He's probably writing nasty things about the two fair maidens who won't dance in the knight sketch at this very minute—er, at least he would be if he could see us from there."

If there is any person who can resist Brittany Pierce's sunshine, it isn't Santana Lopez. Santana gives a stifled laugh, her mouth starting to lift at the corners. "BrittBritt," she says, still refusing to let go, even as the blue knights overpower the black and the sketch draws to its close.

Brittany tilts her head down, so as to look directly into Santana's eyes. Both girls appear colorless under so much shadow, but Santana can sense the blue in Brittany, the earnestness of it. Brittany is sure and still like she is just before a knife throw.

"You'll be okay," she tells Santana, giving her a squeeze. "We're going to go give our poor crushed flowers to the fellas, and then we're going to go outside, and you're going to go have your bath day because it will help you feel better."

Santana can't help but really smile now. "You have my bath days memorized?" she asks, half-incredulous and half-delighted. Brittany shrugs, bashful, and Santana's heartstrings pull tight. Without thinking anything of it, Santana blurts out, "You should sneak out of your backstage and meet me there. We could have our surprise party."

Both girls react to Santana's suggestion in the same way, their eyes widening and their backs straightening up. For a second, Brittany looks the best kind of thunderstruck, and Santana knows what she's imagining because Santana imagines it, too: curtains, water, and wet skin, the thrill of standing nude beneath an open prairie sky with nothing to keep their secrets expect a thin partition of canvas.

(It may be the most stupidly brilliant idea that Santana has ever had, and she didn't even mean to have it.)

But then there's Rachel Berry, hissing at Brittany and Santana from a few feet away.

"What are you two doing? It's time to give favors to the knights!"

At Rachel's word, Santana startles, worried that Rachel might somehow see her thoughts spelled out in her expression. Brittany has the same reaction; she shakes her head, hiding her face with her hair.

Blushing, both girls extricate themselves from each other. They exchange shy smiles.

Without saying anything more, they start to walk over to the knights together. The temperature inside the big top soars under the electric lights—or at least it seems to soar by Santana's estimation.

Just before they reach the line, Brittany leans over and whispers in Santana's ear. "We can't have our surprise party now," she says, "but we will after the show." When Santana opens her mouth to inquire about the logistics of Brittany's plan, Brittany cuts her off. "I'll take care of everything, darlin'. I'll be waiting for you once the bell rings."

Brittany's promise makes Santana grin and stokes the heat in her belly. For as many bad things as have happened to Santana since Mr. Adams called her name in the wagon bay, she can't help but think that everything will be better once she and Brittany are alone together, sharing their secret touches.

Santana finishes out the sketch by presenting Puck with her cutting of bergamot and laughing along with the audience as Brittany goes to give Sam a stem of yellow cupplant only to have him produce a prop bouquet of silk flowers from his back pocket for her instead. Santana exits the big top with Puck grumbling about Sam being a showoff on one side of her, and Brittany fixing her with a very interested look on the other.

When they step outside into the afternoon light, Brittany pulls Santana aside. "Go have your bath day," she repeats. "And then look for me during the knife throwing act. I want to give you something else for your birthday."

Santana grins in spite of herself. "You know today isn't really my birthday, right?" she teases, amazed at how much she can adore one person.

Brittany shrugs and bites her lip, precocious in a way that causes Santana's heart to beat faster. "We'll see about that," she says, winking.

(If any person can resist Brittany Pierce's charms, it certainly isn't Santana Lopez.)

(Maybe most girls couldn't be dashing, but Brittany is dashing, and wonderful, too.)

* * *

><p>The precociousness in Brittany's smile lingers in Santana's thoughts all the way to the stalls behind the dressing tents; sometimes Brittany drives Santana wild until Santana feels almost likely to swoon. Santana bites back a grin as she prepares her shower and doffs her costume between the canvas curtains, exposing her body to the sunlight and smoothing out her hair against the day heat.<p>

Just as Brittany predicted, she instantly feels better once the water hits her skin—though she also feels a low throb in her belly, like she can't wait to meet up with Brittany after the show.

It's easy to imagine that her own hands are Brittany's hands as she rinses herself clean. Her fingers trail down her arms and at her navel, and her thoughts all but run away from her. She starts to envision what might happen should she and Brittany actually manage to evade Puck and their chores and find themselves alone together following the matinee. She doesn't know how much longer she can stand to go without kissing Brittany today. Her whole body wants for it in a way that she couldn't swallow or shake or will away if she tried.

When she lived at the bachelor cottage, Santana read books about love driving girls mad; she never supposed she would be one of those girls herself. She leans her forehead against the pole upholding the colander.

"Brittany Pierce, look what you do to me," she mumbles, laughing at herself for her lovesick hopelessness.

She waits for another minute until the last of the water from the colander drips down her skin onto the grass and then starts to ring out her hair. Not wanting to miss the show, she hastens to redress herself so that she can return to the big top.

Leaving the stall, she swears that she'll kiss Brittany breathless the instant they find themselves alone together.

* * *

><p>Upon returning to her backstage area, Santana finds that Puck retrieved the gear for the gypsy act while she was off having her shower. At present, he stands beside the fire, prepping his staff and Rachel's flail for use, while Rachel hovers just at his shoulder, snipping at him to work faster.<p>

No one seems to notice Santana happening upon the scene except for little Stevie Evans, who pauses in his play to wave to Santana from across the way, wearing a shy smile. Santana returns a wave to him before taking up her usual spot at the aperture at the back of the big top.

Will Schuester has resumed his regular duties as ringmaster following yesterday's suspension, and Santana arrives just in time to see him excuse Jesse St. James from the stage following the lion taming act. Supes rush out from the shadows to unshackle the big cats at the center of the ring and move them into great iron cages upon a flatbed cart instead. In the meantime, Will recites his lines without mistake but also without enthusiasm. He's not even half the showman that Mr. Adams is. The people of Elma don't know what they're missing.

Santana fidgets as Kurt and the other jugglers take to the rings, pins, batons, and balls cycling above their heads. Water from her hair drips down her back, keeping time against her skin like a clepsydra. Her anticipation mounts as Rachel's father and the quadroon manservant perform their illusions for the crowd; when the two magicians cause a piteousness of doves to burst free from their magic box, Santana's heart all but takes wing with the birds.

She waits with shorted breath for Brittany—both for Brittany's surprise and for Brittany's appearance as part of the knife throwing act.

When it comes time for the gypsies to perform, she almost can't bear to leave her spot at the aperture. Only when Puck gives her a stern look does Santana allow him to lead her inside the big top, where she dances well but dizzily. Santana falters near the front of the ring when her mind tricks her into seeing Mr. Remington in the crowd. It isn't him, of course, and, even if it were, Santana doesn't know why she should fear to see his face.

After all, she wants Mr. Remington alive.

(She wants Brittany to be right, for cards to only be cards, and for everyone to make his own way, in the end.)

Santana's nerves get the better of her during the Little Malibran act; though Rachel puts on a wonderfully comic turn before she starts to sing, Santana can only laugh just a little. She feels too wound up waiting to see what surprise Brittany has for her, on the one hand, and waiting to find out whether or not Brittany will make it safely through the knife throwing act, on the other.

When the Pierces take to the ring, Brittany's father walks with the same pronounced limp that he did yesterday, wincing every time he puts pressure on his injured foot. Brittany supports him under one arm, helping him along until they must part so that she can put their satchel into place and make her pose before the board.

While Will narrates the act to the audience, Santana wrings her hands and steps inside the big top, occupying an out-of-the-way place just at the edge of light and dark. Her heart beats so loudly that she wonders if Brittany and Mr. Pierce and Will can't hear it.

Maybe Mr. Remington could even write it into his article.

She forgets all about Brittany's surprise and thinks only of Brittany's safety.

Mr. Pierce makes his first throw wide and to the right—so much so that the knife only barely hits the target, embedding in the wooden backboard less than one half inch from the backboard's edge. The audience murmurs a complaint about Mr. Pierce's poor aim, but Santana can't help but cheer aloud; let Mr. Pierce throw his knives so far off target that they splash in the waters of the Wapsipinicon, for all Santana cares! Just let him spare Brittany his blades.

His second throw as not as inexact as his first, though it also lands wide, so far away from Brittany's shoulder that she would have to stand on tiptoe or jump up and down to touch it with her body. Again, the crowd murmurs, and Santana celebrates.

The third throw is true, the blade sinking into the target close enough to Brittany's left ear that the crowd applauds for Mr. Pierce.

The fourth throw likewise finds home.

And the fifth.

Santana holds her breath for the sixth throw, pressing one hand to her mouth and the other to her heart. Not for the first time in her life, she wishes she could believe in one good thing. She can't ask the devil on her shoulder to save Brittany because it doesn't seem right to do so, so instead she just whispers to anything that will hear her.

"Oh please, oh please, oh please."

She checks the connection between Mr. Pierce and Brittany, locked in fast attention.

The knife blade glints against electric white and wood absorbs the sound of steel. The knife wobbles above Brittany's head, high but safe in its right place, its blade reverberating from the strength in Mr. Pierce's arm.

When the crowd claps for Mr. Pierce's performance, Santana claps louder than anyone else. She knows that Brittany can probably hear her and that Mr. Pierce and Will Schuester can probably hear her, too. She doesn't care, though.

(Let Mr. Remington write her applause into his article, if he will.)

All that matters is Brittany's safety.

Brittany collects her father's bandolier from him and then sets about retrieving his knives from the backboard, showing the blades to the audience as she frees each one in turn. She wears a bright smile, and the spotlight catches in her hair, illuminating it so that it shines more white than gold. She returns the refitted bandolier to her father and dances over to the satchel on the ground, procuring the apple, as per the routine.

Though Brittany doesn't look up from the satchel, Santana knows that Brittany senses her—can feel her at one end of their shared invisible string, waiting and hoping through the dark. Brittany purses her lips and keeps her face downcast. When she stands up, apple in hand, she might cast a quick glance into the shadows at the back of the tent, but Santana can't be sure.

Now that Mr. Pierce has found his rhythm, his next few throws are sure and straight, despite his bum foot and upset balance. Even so, Santana can't help but hate to watch William Tell. "Oh please," she whispers, clasping her hands together so tightly that her bones ache. "Oh please, oh please, oh please."

It all seems to happen slowly.

At one second, Mr. Pierce makes a lunge, stepping forward with a mighty heave. The knife leaves his hand. It turns hilt-over-blade in midair. Mr. Pierce's ankle rolls. He bobbles on his follow-through. The knife hits the high point in its arc. It flashes, caught in the lights.

Santana's whole person seizes.

All the breath goes out of her.

She hears a thud.

A scream.

Sees the shadow of the knife hilt wobble against a field of whitewash.

The audience applauds, and Brittany stands still.

Safe.

The knife rests just a few inches above Brittany's head, dirtied with apple flesh and juice. The apple itself lies in halves on the ground on either side of Brittany. Flecks of fruit and wet surround Brittany's hair, the spatter version of an icon's nimbus, but Brittany herself remains pristine and unscathed.

Only once she sees that Brittany is all right does Santana manage to breathe, taking in a great gulp of air like a person resuscitated after nearly choking. She watches as Mr. Pierce regains his footing and Brittany steps away from the board. In the next second, she's clapping, giving such an enthusiastic ovation that her palms sting and her arms grow sore. She screams out Brittany's name though surely it will be lost to the noise of the crowd.

It isn't, though.

(Brittany always finds her.)

Before going over to join her father for their bow, Brittany turns to the audience and gives them a curtsey, holding out her pretty white skirt as if she were separating one leaf of bond paper from many. Then she turns to the back of the big top and with great purposefulness curtsies again, facing towards where Santana waits in the dark.

Santana knows from experience that though she can clearly see Brittany from where she stands, Brittany almost certainly cannot see her, for the glare from the stage lights obscures the back of the tent as though it were a cloth dressing partition, separating sides of a room. All the same, Brittany smiles her widest smile in Santana's direction, her eyes so bright and wide that Santana can spot the blue in them as easily as she would the blue of the sky were she out-of-doors. Brittany glows under a corona of white.

_I love you_, Brittany mouths out, exaggerating each word. Then, with great deliberateness, she draws an _X_ above her heart with her hand, crossing it. With even greater exaggeration, she mouths out a new message, _For you_. She points with both hands to Santana—almost as if she could see Santana through the dark—and then blows a kiss.

(Has any girl ever received such a gift as Brittany Pierce's heart?)

Santana catches the kiss with both hands, letting out a little surprised laugh as she does so. Though Brittany already confessed to loving her two days ago in a field of Iowa wildflowers, Santana still can't imagine anything better than to have Brittany confess to loving her again here now or to have Brittany confess to loving her any day, really. Santana had never wanted anything more than to be loved, and now she is. To receive such a gift every day is almost more than she can comprehend.

Before Santana realizes what's happening, her vision blurs, the lights spangling through her happy tears, Brittany a blaze of shooting star white as she spins back around to face the crowd and take her bow with her father.

Though the audience has begun to quiet, Santana continues to applaud so loudly that she feels certain Brittany must hear her. Santana watches as Brittany scurries over to the satchel, picking it up and producing a towel from it in a single elegant motion before retreating after her father backstage, drying her head with the towel as she goes. Santana doesn't stop clapping until well after Brittany disappears into the darkness.

(If Santana has Brittany's heart, Brittany has hers just the same.)

* * *

><p>Santana finishes out the show feeling like she could run from one end of the Midwest to the other on her own power, so excited and flustered and eager that she can scarcely keep from bouncing up and down on her toes.<p>

It takes a molasses-paced eternity to make it out of the big top following the grand finale parade, and even longer than that for Puck to gather up his gear and square everything away in the backstage. Santana holds her breath, waiting to see whether Puck will go with her back to their tent or bid her farewell backstage, like he did yesterday.

He straightens up, wearing the gear satchel on his back. "Whew," he says, wiping his brow under the brightness of the sun. "I'm going to take the stuff back to the tent, and then I'm off again, ladybird. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to spend more time with you on your birthday, but I swear I'll make it up to you. What do you say I bring you back something from town so you'll have a surprise at supper tonight?" he asks, reaching out to chuck the underside of Santana's chin with his thumb.

Considering that it takes every ounce of self-governance that Santana possesses not to cheer out loud at the news that Puck will be scarce until evening, it's something of a miracle that she manages to answer him as politely as she does.

"Oh," she says, surprised at the generosity of Puck's offer. She can't imagine what Puck might get her for a birthday gift, being that he knows next to nothing about her. Honestly, the prospect of Puck giving her any sort of surprise makes her nervous. "Um, you don't have to."

Puck laughs and wears his idiot grin. "Sure, I don't have to," he says, petting over Santana's hair with his palm, "but if a man can't do something nice for his missus on her birthday—"

His sentence trails off, and he and Santana both laugh, though nothing seems especially funny. Santana wishes that Puck would take his hand off her head and be gone. She decides to give him a nudge.

"A man who can't keep his appointments probably can't do much of anything else right, either," she says, trying to imitate her grandmother's best scolding tone. She lifts his hand from her head, sidestepping. "You'd best get to town now. Go on! Shoo!"

Puck bites at his idiot smile with one eyetooth, laughs again, and shakes his head. He sets his hat on his brow and readjusts his gear over his shoulder. "Since it's your birthday, I suppose you ought to get the say," he defers, borrowing Sam's words from earlier in the day. "Take it easy, ladybird."

If Santana thought it was difficult not to cheer when Puck said he would be taking leave from the camp for the afternoon, she underestimated the great hardship that remaining in her place until Puck disappeared from sight would pose. With every step Puck takes away from the backstage, Santana's heart speeds in her chest until finally Puck's shadow retreats around the curve of the big top and she can't stay put any longer.

She bolts like a racehorse out of its gate, running so quickly that her feet scarcely touch the ground as she hurries off in the direction of Brittany's backstage.

"Brittany?" she calls, checking the faces of the handful of people who still occupy the space.

None of them are Brittany.

Kurt Hummel offers Santana a wave and a shrug from across the way, as if to say he doesn't know where Brittany could be.

Santana doesn't need his help, though.

She knows precisely where to find her girl and so sets off immediately, traveling by way of her own backstage area, past the dressing tents and across the midway pitch. She cuts beneath the billboard partition, and, after a quick turn, she rounds Mr. Adams' business tent and finds herself at her destination.

The family tent row.

A quick glance around reveals to Santana that she's alone; she hopes she can make it to Brittany before either Ma Jones or Mrs. Schuester detains her. Feeling the need to stay quiet, she sneaks down the way, just as quickly and carefully as one of Mr. Doyle's burglars.

When Santana reaches the Pierce family tent, she stops just outside the door, listening for the sounds of movement inside. She daren't call out for Brittany, lest Mr. Pierce hear her. Instead, she stills herself and listens, trying to distinguish between the distant din of the camp and any noise that might come from inside the tent.

If she strains her ears, she thinks she can hear something shifting around just beyond the tent door. She waits for a long while, her cheek pressed up against hot, white canvas, her hand rested along the nearest pole. Sunlight beats down upon her neck. She counts out ten, twenty, thirty, sixty, one-hundred.

Nothing.

Soon, Santana loses track both of her counting and of whatever shifting she had thought she'd heard. Somehow, Santana had expected Brittany to go straight from the big top to change out of her show costume. Hadn't Brittany said that she'd be waiting for Santana when the show ended? Perhaps she should have specified whereabouts.

Knowing that Brittany is much more likely to find her than vice-versa, Santana determines to wait for Brittany in her own tent and so starts out in that direction, chuckling at herself for her own eagerness.

By now, Santana's hair has dried, and her cheeks, brow, and shoulders all exude warmth, as if they had just come out hot from an oven. Butterflies flit through the grass and dragonflies seem almost to levitate above it. In the sky overhead, sparrows harass one another in dives and swoops. Summer in Iowa teems with animal brilliance, a flourishing liveliness that Santana has never seen anywhere else.

As Santana passes by the business tent, she happens upon a wide stretch of open grass—sand bluestem waving in ripples, whitehead caps upon a sea of paling green. Whereas normally the supes construct the white city in tight rows, here they've had to make an exception, adjusting for a slight decline in the terrain. As Santana emerges from the trisection of tents, she finds herself looking out over a strip of uninhabited prairie between the higher elevation camp and the lower.

Then, motion.

Santana's heart knows what it is that she sees almost before her eyes do and thrills for it.

Brittany wades through the grass, immersed up to the hem of her skirt. When Brittany sees Santana, her whole face turns up into a wide, close-lipped grin. For a moment, Brittany stands still, as if she's too excited to either move or speak, but then her excitement seems to well over.

"Santana!" she calls, waving over the field.

(Everything in Santana stands at attention, like an audience rising to ovation.)

(She had never loved her name until she heard it spoken from Brittany's lips.)

Joy firework-flares in Santana's belly, and, before she knows what she's doing, she's taken off at a run, high-stepping over the grass and uneven turf, almost flying down the incline. Bluestem shushes against her strides and tramples beneath her bare feet.

Going downhill, momentum pushes her along until she sprints almost so quickly that she can't keep up with herself. Her skirt, sashes, and hair flow behind her like pennants. Laughter bubbles in her throat as she sees Brittany starting to run toward her, just as impatient as she.

The girls meet in the middle of the meadow, and though Santana tries to slow down, her legs still carry her on speed from the incline. Her feet lift from the ground.

As soon as Brittany sees Santana leap, she extends her arms, welcoming it. For a split instant, Santana experiences the breathless ecstasy of freefall. She shrieks and laughs as she and Brittany collide, her eyes widening and then closing tight just as body meets body.

In the next second, her legs wrap around the slimmest part of Brittany's waist, and her arms find Brittany's shoulders. Brittany catches her first at the bottom of her ribs but then shifts to hold her at the small of her back and under one leg.

It's an ungraceful coming together, and the force of it nearly knocks Brittany over backwards. She staggers, supporting all of Santana's weight. The impact hurts but only briefly before giddiness washes over both girls in a wave. They struggle out laughs, winded, and Santana slides into place on Brittany's hips, feeling Brittany's warmth against her breasts, belly, and thighs. Another thrill blooms in Santana's quick.

And then, she and Brittany are kissing.

It's all one single motion—the leap, the catch, and the kiss follow one from another, clumsy and unplanned. Santana's lips smash against the side of Brittany's mouth until Brittany finds her and guides her down so that they can properly reach each other, their noses pressed into each other's skin, their lips already working.

The kiss plays through Santana like a warm-up note, putting her in Brittany's key. Brittany hums against her mouth, and her lips tingle, body ebbing in time to her—no Brittany's—heartbeat. Santana's hands ravel in Brittany's hair, one at the nape of Brittany's neck, where heat and soft meet, the other behind Brittany's ear.

"Britt," she gasps as Brittany turns their kiss.

(She had waited for this moment all day.)

Brittany takes a fumbling step backwards, and Santana starts to slip down Brittany's body, her legs slinking past Brittany's hips. For a second, Brittany holds Santana aloft, with Santana's feet suspended just above the ground, grass tickling her ankles. Santana hardly minds her slow descent; it deepens her and Brittany's kiss, fitting them up closer against each other until they press together flush.

Santana feels dizzy in the best kind of way, drunker on Brittany now than she ever was on cider beneath a full moon. Slowly, Brittany sets her down, first on tiptoe, then on flat feet, until finally it breaks their kiss.

Brittany's lips and cheeks are pink and her expression wonderfully shy—almost as if she and Santana hadn't just run across a field to give one another a reckless, unencumbered kiss.

"Hey, darlin'," she pants, breathless and dopey.

"Hey," Santana pants back, just the same.

Santana's heart squeezes in her chest, and she reaches out to take Brittany's hand, wanting to keep touching Brittany now that they've found each other. She grabs hold of Brittany's fingertips, feeling Brittany's pulse through the pads of them.

"I was looking for you," she confesses.

Brittany gives a silly, lopsided smile, still stupefied from their kiss. "Yeah?" she gasps, trying to win back her breath. She readjusts her hand in Santana's, fitting their pinky fingers together. "I'm sorry I missed you," she says. "I had to put some things right for our surprise party."

"What kind of things?" Santana asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Brittany shrugs. "I didn't want anyone to interrupt," she explains, "so I just went and told Mrs. Schuester that Ma Jones needed us in the kitchen to help make supper right now. I was on my way to go tell Ma Jones that Mrs. Schuester needs us in the dressing tents when I ran into you. I wanted to make it before you missed me, but I had to change my clothes before I could go anywhere, so."

Santana's heartstrings give a tug in her chest. "Britt," she says earnestly, "you couldn't run fast enough to keep me from missing you when you're gone."

"Oh _lands_, Santana."

"Well, it's true."

Brittany seems more pleased by Santana's admission than embarrassed by it, really. She shakes her head, delighted.

"Will you come with me to give our excuse to Ma Jones?" she asks.

Santana grins. "Sure thing."

* * *

><p>Ma Jones leans against her great, steel cooking pot, resting on her elbows. She wears a stoic expression, her mouth tight but brow even, as Brittany very convincingly explains that Mrs. Schuester requires both herself and Santana to inventory the costumes from the Independence Day spectacular before the costumes go into storage for the remainder of the traveling season.<p>

Though Santana fully expects Ma to see through her and Brittany's fib or at least to protest that Mrs. Schuester can't take two potential helpers away from her in one afternoon, Ma accepts what Brittany tells her both well and without question.

"All right," Ma says, shrugging. "Just don't make too much trouble, you two."

"We won't," Brittany and Santana promise in unison.

(It has never been so impossible for Santana to keep from grinning before.)

With their cover in place, Brittany and Santana hurry out of the mess pit in the direction of Santana's tent, linked pinky finger-in-pinky finger and going along as quickly as they can without running.

Once they escape the mess pit and find themselves alone passing through the tent rows, they burst out laughing, delighted at their own ingenuity and the happiness of their secret plans. They shift to hold hands rather than just fingers. Everything seems so private and gay between them; Santana very nearly forgets that anything or anyone else besides her and Brittany exists in the world.

Except.

Brittany and Santana slip through the narrow alley between two tents, emerging into the small junction behind them, only to happen upon two other persons.

The two older Flying Dragon Changs, the fellow and the elder girl, sit facing each other on three-legged stools, a small folding table between them. Two matching teacups rest on the tabletop, as does a steel coffeepot. The acrobats wear their plainclothes rather than their show costumes. They're sharing afternoon tea.

In the instant before they notice Brittany and Santana's presence, the Changs seem almost as happy as Brittany and Santana do, caught in a moment of droll conversation; the woman laughs and covers her mouth, and the man pulls a precious face, scrunching up his nose. He's clearly just said something silly, either as a joke or by mistake.

But then he and his companion look up.

And then everyone halts all at once—the Changs at their table and the girls where they stand.

Both pairs of people stop laughing, and their smiles disappear from their faces, replaced by expressions of surprise. The whole situation seems very much like an intrusion, but it's impossible to say upon whom.

For a moment, no one moves.

But then Brittany step forwards, tugging Santana along with her and stopping just in front of the Changs' folding table. With her free hand, Brittany waves to the Changs. "How do you do, Mr. Chang? Mrs. Chang?" she says formally, as if they were old acquaintances who had encountered one another outside the opera or at the dinner club. She gestures to their coffeepot. "Spending a romantic afternoon together, I see? That's dandy, isn't it?"

The Changs stare at Brittany, their faces unreadable. They glance at each other and then look back at her. If Santana had to guess, she would say they were confounded. In all truth, Santana feels the same way.

"Britt," she says, "what're you—?"

Brittany indicates Santana at her side, holding up her and Santana's clasped hands. "As you can see," she says to the Changs, just so, "I'm out and about with Santana. In case you didn't know, we're in love—"

Momentarily, Santana thinks that her heart might beat so quickly that it will explode in her chest, but then she realizes what Brittany is playing at.

The Flying Dragon Changs don't speak English.

Brittany can say whatever she likes to them about her and Santana, and they'll be none the wiser for it.

It's a queer realization and a possibility that Santana had never really considered before. Though she and Brittany must keep their love for each other secret from the whole world otherwise, they can tell these two people about it, at least.

It won't do any harm.

In fact, it might do some good.

After all, Santana has often longed to show Brittany off to someone—to say without fear that it's Brittany she loves and not anyone else. Pretending to be married to Puck when she feels so committed to Brittany is such a burden. The prospect of being able to explain what's in her heart thrills her.

Suddenly, Santana finds that she knows exactly why Brittany decided to speak to the Changs in the first place. She grins and grabs Brittany's one hand in both of hers, wrapping herself and Brittany up more tightly together.

"—we're fantastically in love, actually," she chimes in, joy welling in her breast, "like in a storybook."

Brittany beams at Santana for her contribution to the conversation, but the Changs only blink, unable to understand why Brittany and Santana insist on speaking to them, though everyone present knows very well that they can't comprehend a word said in English.

"I know some people think that you two are brother and sister," Brittany says to the Changs, "but you're not, are you? You're in love with each other just like we're in love with each other, and I think you're a lovely couple."

"I do, too," Santana says truthfully, recalling the night when the lights went out under the big top and she glimpsed the lady Dragon Chang giving the fellow a kiss, rescuing him from the trapeze.

Brittany beams at Santana again before turning back to the Changs. "Anyway, I really want to go kiss Santana, so we're going to leave now. Enjoy your coffee or tea or whatever that is," she says, nodding at the coffeepot.

The Changs only stare as Brittany and Santana make their exit, their faces still blank and their posture stiff. Santana can only imagine what this whole encounter must have seemed like from their perspective. They probably think that Brittany and Santana are mad.

(They're probably right, just a little bit.)

Brittany and Santana scarcely make it to the next junction of tents before they start laughing again, doubling over and leaning on one another for support. Their exchange with the Changs wasn't really funny, per se—more wonderful than anything, wonderful to be able to speak freely with no secrets and no doubletalk for once.

"God," Santana laughs, "let's have tea with them more often!"

"We could have a picnic!" Brittany agrees, wearing her widest grin.

"How romantic!" Santana says, pretending to swoon.

By now, they've come upon Santana's tent row. Since no one is around except for them, Brittany gives Santana a twirl, as if they were dancing, and Santana's gypsy skirts flare about her legs like wings on a whirligig. As Brittany and Santana step up to Santana's tent door, excitement and nerves flutter in Santana's chest. She laughs again before suddenly her feet come out from under her, and she shrieks.

For an instant, Santana reels, disoriented and unsure as to why and how she finds herself above the ground, but then she feels Brittany's arms underneath her. Brittany has grabbed Santana up under her knees and at her back, carrying Santana as if she meant to rock Santana to sleep. At first, Santana scrambles, scared for herself, but then her arms find a place around Brittany's shoulders, and she stabilizes.

Brittany grins at Santana, with her eyes a wild blue. She waits until Santana nods that it's okay to proceed and then kicks the door to Santana's tent open just enough to shoulder her way inside. Canvas rubs rough upon Santana's limbs and sticks to her hair. She closes her eyes and ducks closer to Brittany, letting out a little squeak as she breathes in the campfire-windswept-apple-tinged scent on Brittany's skin. The light changes from bright to dim behind her eyelids.

In the next second, Brittany starts to let Santana down, setting her on the grass. Santana opens her eyes just as she regains her footing. Brittany quickly closes the tent flap behind them, sealing them in the brown lowlight of the indoors. They're alone.

When Brittany turns back around, Santana meets her with a grin. "What was that for, BrittBritt?" Santana asks, reaching out to take Brittany's hand in hers again.

Brittany shrugs, her hair falling into her face. "You seemed nervous," she says matter-of-factly, "and I felt nervous a bit, too, so I thought that maybe I should do something to make us not nervous anymore. Are you nervous now?"

Truthfully, Santana does still feel nervous. Though she's never been more eager to do anything in her life, she also can't help but fret about the details of this "surprise party."

After all, the last time she and Brittany shared touches in her tent, it was so wonderful—perfect, even.

What if this experience doesn't measure up?

While Santana has no doubt that she'll enjoy every minute she spends with Brittany, she worries that she might not be able to make Brittany feel good in kind. The thought of disappointing Brittany in any way is a dreadful one.

(Santana just wants to do right by Brittany always.)

She shrugs. "I still am, a little," she confesses.

Brittany nods, sympathetic. Her expression turns very soft as she draws Santana's hand up to her mouth, kissing Santana's knuckles just over Santana's thread ring and then Santana's palm, right at the center. She meets Santana's eyes, making sure that Santana is all right before she takes a step in closer.

Her free hand brushes Santana's hair back behind Santana's ear, uncovering Santana's face, and then tilts up Santana's chin. With exceeding gentleness, she kisses the underside of Santana's jaw, her lips feather-soft upon Santana's skin. Santana lets out a little gasp, amazed at how keen Brittany's touches already feel to her, despite their lightness.

Brittany kisses at Santana's pulse point, her lips working on every offbeat of Santana's mouse-quick heart. Only as Brittany moves in closer to Santana's body does Santana realize that Brittany's heartbeat is just as rapid as her own. All at once, she loves Brittany even more for trying to make her feel less nervous even though Brittany clearly feels nervous herself. She shows Brittany so by lifting Brittany's chin and pulling Brittany into a real kiss.

Unlike their kiss in the meadow, this one is sweet and graceful, with Santana standing just a bit on her toes to reach Brittany's mouth. When she and Brittany break apart, they're both grinning.

"Hi," Santana says.

"Hi," Brittany says back.

Without another word, Brittany leads Santana over to the cot, and both girls sit down, side by side, just like they did in Onawa. At first, Santana thinks that they might kiss again, but they don't—not right away. Instead, Brittany pats the sling of the cot, asking without speaking for Santana to lie down with her, and they do.

The cot is scarcely big enough to accommodate two full-grown people, even when both people are slender young women. Usually, when Santana and Puck share the cot, he lies underneath her so that both of their bodies can fit on the canvas. With Brittany, Santana lies on her side so that their knees press together and their faces draw so close to each other that Santana can see even the faintest freckles splashed across the bridge of Brittany's nose. Brittany reaches out and smoothes back Santana's hair, and Santana closes her eyes to the sensation.

"Talk to me about something, darlin'," Brittany mumbles.

Santana doesn't open her eyes yet. She shifts to allow Brittany more room to stroke through her hair. "Like what?" she asks.

"Like anything," says Brittany. "Like how about New York City? I've never been there, and it's where you grew up."

Santana opens her eyes. "You've never been to New York City?" she asks, surprised that someone as well-traveled as Brittany has never visited such an important place.

Brittany shrugs, bashful. "Our Eastern route runs through Upstate," she explains, "but there's no place to make camp inside New York City, I don't think, so we always skip it. Blaine says that New York City is a Barnum & Bailey town, anyhow—or at least it used to be before they hopped over for their European tour. They used to play Madison Square Garden. We always stick to the countryside. I've never been to any really big cities, but Blaine says they have buildings a hundred feet tall in New York and that the sidewalks there stretch for miles. Is that true?"

At Brittany's word, one of the songs Santana's father and his doctor friends used to sing around the piano enters Santana's mind. She grins at the memory.

"What?" says Brittany, shifting a bit so that she nestles under Santana, Santana lying across her chest.

Santana laughs. Rather than explaining her circuitous train of thought, she clears her throat. Leaning over Brittany, her hair swept across Brittany's breast and shoulders, she begins to sing.

_East Side, West Side, all around the town,  
><em>_the tots sang "Ring-around-Rosie," "London Bridge is falling down"  
><em>_Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke,  
><em>_tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York_

Santana can scarcely keep from giggling, even singing such a short snippet of the song. She's being silly, really—except that Brittany doesn't seem to think so.

When Santana stops singing, stifling laughter, Brittany's eyes turn wide. "Keep going!" Brittany insists, nodding her encouragement.

Though Brittany's enthusiasm shocks Santana, Santana isn't one to refuse Brittany anything. She swallows her laughter, and, after another nod from Brittany, finds the tune again, this time singing more in earnest, using her real singing voice, as though she were performing for her father and his friends in the parlor. She trails a hand through Brittany's hair and sings.

_That's where Johnny Casey, little Jimmy Crowe,  
><em>_Jakey Krause, the baker, who always had the dough,  
><em>_pretty Nellie Shannon with a dude as light as cork—  
><em>_she first picked up the waltz step on the sidewalks of New York_

_Things have changed since those times, some are up in "G"  
><em>_Others they are wand'rers, but they all feel just like me  
><em>_they'd part with all they've got, could they once more walk  
><em>_with their best girls and have a twirl on the sidewalks of New York_

Brittany smiles her most pleased cat-grin all the way through Santana's song. Only after Santana's last note fades from the air inside the tent does she move, quietly clapping her hands just over her own belly.

She gives a little cheer—"Yay!"—looking as delighted as delighted can be. Then she says, more seriously, "You have the most beautiful voice, Santana. I think I could listen to you sing forever."

The fact that Santana knows that Brittany means her compliment in all seriousness and not just as flattery causes Santana to blush even more furiously than she might do otherwise. Heat spreads out over her cheeks and brow, even reaching her shoulders.

"But Britt," she protests, "you listen to the Little Malibran of Seville sing every night—and Ma Jones sings most days. They both have much better voices than mine."

Brittany shakes her head. "Nope," she says surely. "Different voices, not better."

Santana's blush burns even brighter. She bites her lip. "You are something else, Brittany Pierce," she says, at a loss to explain how wonderful Brittany makes her feel.

"No, you are, Santana," Brittany returns, grinning for a moment before her expression shifts, suddenly turning somber. "How come you don't sing more often?" she asks. "I'd never heard you sing just by yourself until now. I didn't know you could."

Santana shrugs. "I dunno," she admits. "I usually only sing when I'm by myself because I don't want to bother anyone." Then, "Do you sing, BrittBritt?"

Brittany laughs. "I can sing all right," she explains, "but I'm better off with other people. I'm not like you or Rachel or Ma Jones."

"I bet you're better than you think you are," Santana says automatically.

Brittany laughs again and shakes her head. Instead of acknowledging Santana's compliment, she says, "I like learning new things about you, darlin'."

Santana agrees. "I like learning new things about you, too."

"Let's do it forever, okay?" Brittany says.

"Sure thing," Santana promises.

They kiss again, easy and slow, their mouths moving together in a perfect lazy sort of exploration, Brittany rolling Santana's bottom lip between both of her own. The kisses stir a nagging, bothered sensation in Santana's quick. Even so, she still feels nervous enough not to press it. Instead, she pulls back.

"I don't actually know much about New York City," she admits to Brittany, continuing their conversation. "I wasn't ever allowed beyond the garden at the bachelor cottage, really. I could see the city from my bedroom window, but I never actually went out into it except for when Puck brought me from the bachelor cottage to the boarding house, and then I was too scared to really take in much of anything. It was all a blur."

Though Santana never thought anything of it when she was growing up—not having other experiences to compare to her own—she realizes now that her childhood was a very peculiar one. With anyone else, she might feel too embarrassed to confess that she had been all but a prisoner in her own home. With Brittany, she feels comfortable enough to talk about her past, though still not quite certain how Brittany will react to hearing about it.

She searches Brittany's face and finds Brittany's eyes soft, her mouth sympathetic. "You were like a princess locked away in a tower," Brittany says, thumbing at Santana's wrists under Santana's bangles.

(Santana's copper penny gives a flip in her belly.)

"You're too nice to me," she says to Brittany, leaning down to kiss Brittany's cheek.

"Hardly," Brittany disagrees.

"No, you are," Santana insists, moving down to kiss Brittany's lips. "You're the nicest person in the entire world, Brittany. You're the kindest, sweetest, best everything."

Now the girls kiss deeply, Brittany's tongue running along Santana's as they move against each other. Santana remains propped on Brittany's chest, one hand at the cap of Brittany's head, the other at Brittany's side. Brittany's hand moves against Santana's back, shifting from Santana's blouse to the bare skin of Santana's shoulders. Her palm feels hot. Every time it shifts, it sends a shiver through Santana's body.

Brittany's other hand moves to the back of Santana's neck, guiding Santana's kisses against her skin. Under Brittany's direction, Santana kisses Brittany's mouth and jaw and the amazingly soft dint behind Brittany's ear. Brittany hums, "Uhm. Your kisses are so sweet, Santana."

The throb that has intermittently been in the pit of Santana's belly all day intensifies, putting her into a rhythm. After a minute, Brittany brings Santana back to her lips. She kisses Santana deep and long. When the kiss breaks, both girls pull away, breathless.

"Do you maybe want to take our clothes off?" Brittany asks, starting to sit up from the cot.

Santana grins, rapscallion. "Whoever invented clothes is an idiot," she says by way of agreement.

* * *

><p>Though it would undoubtedly prove easier to undress while standing on the ground than it would while lying in the cot, neither one of the girls seems keen to move away from each other, even for the minute it would require from them to change their positions.<p>

In order to maintain their proximity to each other, they maneuver awkwardly within the canvas sling, Brittany sitting up on her knees and sliding to the end of the bed where Santana's feet usually go when she sleeps while Santana remains in her previous spot. Brittany straddles Santana's legs.

"I'll go first," she says with a wink.

When Santana realizes that Brittany means to undress on top of her, her heart beats at a sprint. Though Santana has seen Brittany naked before and even lied flush against her when neither one of them was wearing any clothes, somehow the idea of watching Brittany disrobe while almost sitting on her lap causes Santana's head to spin.

"Okay," she says stupidly, reaching up to put her hands on Brittany's hips, anchoring Brittany to her body.

Brittany flashes Santana a wicked smile before loosing the sash at her waist and dropping it to the grass at the side of the cot, as if she were unwrapping ribbon from a Christmas parcel. Santana temporarily shifts her hands away from Brittany's hips, allowing Brittany to continue. With great precociousness, Brittany starts to peel up her own skirt, revealing her long, toned legs. She must take her chemise off right along with her dress because, the next thing Santana knows, she can see the place between Brittany's legs and a stretch of fair, unblemished skin leading up to Brittany's navel and the bottom of her ribcage. Excitement and nerves seize in Santana's chest as Brittany reaches behind her own head, about to free herself entirely from her outfit.

But then.

For the third time in less than an hour, Santana feels the ground slip out from under her. The fathomless thrill of freefall blooms in her stomach. In a fleeting instant, everything upends. She shuts her eyes on instinct but scarcely has time to brace before impact.

She lands hard on the ground, her skirts and limbs in a heap. Pain shoots through her wrist, and she yelps. Brittany lands half on top of her, legs in her lap. When Santana opens her eyes, she immediately sees what happened.

The cot flipped, probably when Brittany arched her back to discard her dress.

For a long while, neither Brittany nor Santana says or does anything. Vaguely, Santana wonders if either she or Brittany is hurt. When she determines that they aren't, she meets Brittany's eyes.

Then.

Both girls laugh even more raucously when they did when they managed to dupe Ma Jones or when they "took tea" with the Dragon Changs. They laugh from deep inside themselves, hard and until they almost can't breathe for it, the absurdity of the situation not lost on them. Santana clutches her belly. Brittany covers her face.

The fact that Santana had been so worried that her time alone with Brittany wouldn't be perfect somehow makes the moment even funnier to her.

"Are you okay?" Brittany laughs out.

Santana nods, unable to contain herself. "Perfect," she manages, flinging herself forward to wrap Brittany up in a hug.

For several seconds, she and Brittany laugh against each other's bodies, Santana's face in Brittany's hair and Brittany's ribs racking against her. When they finally compose themselves, they peel back, wiping at their eyes and taking deep breaths. A quick survey of the damage reveals the cot overturned on its side and Brittany's clothing constellated around Brittany and Santana on the grass but no trouble more serious than that.

"Do you still want to—?" Santana asks.

"Yes, please," Brittany says quickly.

Neither one of the girls moves to right the cot. Instead, Santana quickly and unceremoniously undresses on the ground, shucking off her bangle bracelets and disrobing from her costume layer by layer while Brittany crawls towards the back of the tent.

At first, Santana doesn't pay attention to what Brittany's doing, but once she unfastens her corset, she looks up to find that Brittany has rescued Puck's sleeping mat from the corner and begun unrolling it so that she can lay it out on the floor.

"Will that be big enough for two people?" Santana wonders.

Brittany flashes Santana a sly smile. Rather than answering Santana's question right away with words, she proceeds to unfold the sleeping mat further than Santana had ever seen it unfolded before. Apparently, the mat is really only a thick blanket doubled over. When Brittany opens it, it becomes as wide as Santana's bed was back at the bachelor cottage.

"Circus magic," Brittany says, pleased with her own trick.

Now that they're both naked and able to see each other in full, Santana allows herself to appreciate Brittany's body in the same way that she would the unfolding of a most wonderful story.

Her gaze trails over the rarest stretches of Brittany's skin—the spaces she doesn't get to see on regular days—tracing the rounds of Brittany's breasts, the suture in Brittany's belly, and the pucker of Brittany's navel, before glancing at Brittany's scars, the whiter one on Brittany's shoulder and the pinker one on Brittany's thigh.

Santana loves Brittany's whole shape and person, just like she loves Brittany.

She feels Brittany's attention on her the same way.

Without thinking about it, she moves forward onto the unrolled sleeping mat and pats her hand for Brittany to lie down on the mat beside her, as they had done before in the cot. Brittany accepts Santana's invitation, settling onto her side facing Santana. Both girls let out sighs, contented again following their fright.

"I lost my balance," Brittany says, as if to apologize for knocking over the cot.

Santana laughs. "At first I thought that I was just too dizzy from kissing you and that the room was spinning," she admits.

She expects Brittany to tell her she's being silly, but Brittany doesn't. Instead, Brittany blinks once, as if a camera has flashed very close to her face, and ducks forward, pressing a quick, deliberate kiss to the tip of Santana's nose. It's sweet and it's perfect and it's not at all what Santana had anticipated.

(A shiver runs through Santana's body from sheer adoration.)

(She had never realized how much she loves surprises until she realized how much she loves Brittany.)

Whereas normally Santana might ask Brittany what she had done that for, now Santana finds she knows exactly why. Unable to do anything else for it, Santana mirrors Brittany's action, ducking forward to give Brittany a peck in kind—only she aims her kiss for Brittany's lips.

It's a silly kiss, more funny than anything, and both girls giggle at the contact, Santana shivering again from the thrill of it. Brittany gives Santana's hands a squeeze and wriggles closer to Santana until their noses nudge together.

"Howdy," Brittany says, grinning her cat grin. A bright, pretty flush colors her cheeks. Her face hovers so close to Santana's that Santana could count individual tiger flecks in the blue of Brittany's eyes, if she wanted to.

Santana can't stop giggling for Brittany's cheekiness. She likes everything about this moment, from being close enough to Brittany to see the honey tone of Brittany's eyelashes to the major thrum that plays through her own body, a prelude to something. Her and Brittany's hands press against her navel, tethering their bodies to each other.

Brittany purposefully misaims her next kiss, catching Santana just at the corner of her mouth but not on it. Santana squirms beside Brittany and tangles their legs together more thoroughly.

"You're teasing me," Santana complains, and both girls laugh breathily.

Santana tries to lean in for another kiss just then, but Brittany pretends to be shy about it and squirrels away, blushing. When Santana shows disappointment, Brittany's fake bashfulness morphs into something else.

"No fair," Brittany says, dipping in to meet Santana's pout.

This time, she does so truly, pecking Santana on the lips and then leaning in again for something more lingering.

The second her lips pillow Santana's, Santana sighs, appeased. She opens her mouth, hoping that Brittany might take her hint, and Brittany does so, slipping her tongue past Santana's lips. At Brittany's cue, Santana opens her mouth even wider and allows Brittany to lead them, painting long, hot strokes wherever she can touch.

The stoked feeling kindled in Santana's belly from before flares into a real flame, heating her from the insides out. She hums to let Brittany know how well she likes the sensation and squirms again so that their breasts brush each other.

"May I touch you?" Brittany asks, running her hands up and down Santana's ribcage, kneading at the soft place just to the side of Santana's breast.

"Please do," Santana says. Then, "May I touch you, too?"

Brittany nods, "Sure thing, please."

They both move their hands at once, Brittany's fingers trailing up Santana's ribs to Santana's breasts just at the same time that Santana thumbs over Brittany's nipples. Santana breathes deeply, adjusting herself into Brittany's hands so that Brittany's palms curl over her. She shudders as Brittany begins to feel her and responds in kind, mapping out smooth-round-soft.

"These feel nice," Brittany says artlessly, massaging Santana's breasts again. She looks at them, delighted, a flush over her skin. "May I try what you did last time?"

At first, Santana doesn't know what exactly Brittany means, but then Brittany opens her mouth, and suddenly Santana remembers.

A thrill jolts through her.

"Please," she says, adjusting herself on the blanket so that Brittany is level with her breasts.

Brittany grins and angles her head, drawing her open mouth to Santana's skin. Her tongue is candy pink and warm. It slicks over the round of Santana's breast, leaving a wet trail after it. Eventually, Brittany finds her way and takes Santana's nipple into her mouth, laving over Santana's skin. Santana gasps, her own hands stopping over Brittany's ribs. She arches against the blanket.

Brittany looks wild, like the girl who first discovered fire.

The feel and the image and the motion of her take Santana in a rush.

"Oh," Santana whimpers, writhing with starched cotton underneath her and Brittany's animal heat pressed upon her everywhere else.

Brittany kisses her breast, open-mouthed, and then kisses it again, careful, slow, and purposeful, her nose nudging deep into Santana's skin.

"Britt," Santana whimpers again, the throb between her legs suddenly unignorable, "can you touch me, please?"

She reaches for Brittany's hands, which have found a place just at her waist, and tries to guide Brittany to where she means, but she finds her own movements clumsy and confused. She can scarcely think of anything except for the strokes of Brittany's mouth against her skin and her own need for more and deeper friction.

Luckily, Brittany understands Santana's words, even when Santana's wrists falter.

Brittany pulls away from Santana's breast, moving back up the blanket to kiss Santana's mouth, searching and fervent. She tastes like salt sweat and summer heat, like Santana mingled with her own self. When she pulls away from Santana, their lips smack loudly.

"Here," Brittany pants, reaching down to coax Santana's left leg up and over her own right hip. She wriggles her left leg between Santana's knees, propping them open wide enough for her hand to fit where it wants to go, and then kisses at Santana's neck again, working with more tongue than lips. Her heat feels urgent, though her kisses trail, lazy. She thumbs over the muscle that leads from Santana's hipbone down to the space between Santana's legs.

"Britt, please," Santana reminds her, kissing at Brittany's hair, though she can't entirely reach it, nuzzling her forehead against Brittany's. Her hands slip from Brittany's ribs to clasp at the small of Brittany's back. She hugs Brittany's body closer to her.

Somehow, Santana can scarcely believe what they're doing—how perfect it is and how wonderful it feels. Her whole body waits, keyed to Brittany's touch.

"Anything you like," Brittany whispers fervently. Her left hand stills over Santana's hipbone, anchoring Santana in place, and her right hand presses over the juncture between Santana's legs, mapping it out for just a moment before she ventures further.

Santana's body knows what it waits for now and somehow the anticipation makes the satisfaction sweeter.

Brittany's first touch, though glancing, feels like a miracle, and Santana's mouth falls open. Brittany's finger finds that perfect, aching spot almost right away, and Santana's hips slide to meet the sensation, keen for it. Santana's heart beats hard for Brittany, and Brittany kisses Santana's mouth and touches Santana again, this time with more pressure.

She starts to stroke in a rhythm.

Though Santana could already feel a slick between her legs, more obvious with every throb, the spot where Brittany touches only slicks as Brittany's fingers start to work over it, pressing faster and in little circles, sending starlight-shocks through Santana's body.

It feels amazing—Brittany's fingertip slipping through Santana, quick and persistent, pulling something out of her, dark but beautiful and sweet. Santana shudders and her breath turns thready.

"Oh, Brittany," she groans, her voice plump with so much sensation. She presses their foreheads together, both her and Brittany with skin damp from sweat. "God, Brittany... Brittany... Britt..."

Brittany quiets her with a kiss. "Shh," she whispers. She meets Santana's eyes, her pupils spreading out like midnight sky sprawling over the ocean, covering her irises. She wears a small, pleased version of her cat-smile. "You've got to be quieter or else someone might hear us. Put your face against my shoulder, please," she coaxes, helping Santana slide into place.

Her fingers never stop working.

It's hot, hiding behind a veil of Brittany's hair, but Santana loves the smell of Brittany, like wind and copper and the earth after rain, and she loves Brittany. For an instant, her mind clears of every thought, except for an awareness of how perfect Brittany's body seems against hers and how safe and cared for she feels, like Brittany could take her anywhere and it would be all right.

The animal want inside Santana would have her cry out, but she presses her lips against Brittany's collarbone, trying desperately to keep quiet. She still whines and keens at Brittany's touch, though she can't help but do it.

"Good girl," Brittany tells her, and she feels the compliment everywhere, right down to her quick.

Wet ribbons swim inside of Santana's belly, coiling ever tighter as Brittany winds her up. She wants for something, feeling empty, but also writhes because it's all too much, her hips rolling to follow where Brittany lists.

"Oh God!" she yelps, unable to stifle herself anymore. "Brittany!"

"Shh," Brittany tells her again, thumbing over her hipbone. She reaches up to stroke first her own hair and then Santana's away from Santana's face, as tender as if she were arranging flowers for a bouquet.

"BrittBritt," Santana whispers, minding her volume for the moment, "m-may I touch you, too, please? I think it would help."

She doesn't have to explain with what.

Brittany seems to know.

She kisses Santana on the lips, more slowly than she has in a while. "I'd like that," she says honestly, lifting her right leg to curl over Santana's back, opening herself for Santana to touch. "Kiss me, please," she says and Santana does, sucking Brittany's bottom lip between her own as her left hand finds the heat between Brittany's legs. She smiles into the kiss and Brittany smiles in return.

"Hey, Britt?" she says.

"Yeah?" Brittany answers, breathless.

"I love you."

"I love you back."

(If someone had dropped a thousand copper pennies into a wishing well, it couldn't feel as lucky and wonderful as this.)

Santana touches Brittany then, her middle fingers trailing through the wet-hot-slick at Brittany's center while her thumb goes straight to the swelled button waiting for her higher up. Brittany gasps into her ear and rolls her body, adjusting to the touch. Her fingers move against Santana.

And, oh God.

The girls move in mirror of one another, so that every time Santana presses her fingers to Brittany, Brittany does the same to her in return. At first, they start slowly, but then after just a few seconds, Santana ups their pace, already tuned and needing. They kiss each other, stupid and with open mouths.

"Oh God, you feel—," Santana moans. Her free hand moves from Brittany's back to the top of Brittany's hair, cradling Brittany's head and pulling Brittany in closer to her. She feels so tender toward Brittany and so perfectly in awe of her, too.

Santana gasps, unable to finish her thought. Shocks of brightness play along her spine and in her belly and down her legs. She watches Brittany bloom before her, unfurling like a flower finding sunshine heat. Brittany's mouth opens into an _o_, casting Brittany the most intense kind of beautiful, with reds everywhere and pinks. Brittany's brow knits together, and she keens.

Santana has never seen anything like her.

It's all too much.

Santana's heart beats out love, rapid, in her chest. She feels hot all over but also windswept, placeless and everywhere all at once. A golden feeling builds in her quick. It grows fast and strong, a current to carry her away.

She wants Brittany to go with her.

"Britt—," she starts, but she can't say more. Brittany draws another stroke through Santana and touches the perfect, aching part of her, just so.

A firework feeling flares in Santana's belly.

"Brittany!" she cries, surprised, filled, and taken over.

Her hips jolt of their own accord, and the feeling spreads out through her spine and to every inch of her, on her skin and in it. It's hot and sweet and throbs in waves, with brave punctuated bursts. Her toes spread and curl and dizziness crashes over her.

Though her own fingers still against Brittany, Brittany continues to work against her, rubbing and pressing, filling the feeling out until finally Santana gasps, "Okay," and Brittany heeds her, stopping the motion at once.

Shocks still fire over Santana's skin and deep in her belly.

She smiles, stupefied. "Can you feel that, Britt?" she asks, dopey and breathless. "That's it... that's you... Let me catch my breath. Then I'll take care of you."

Brittany returns her grin and kisses her. "You're so beautiful when you're like that," she says, a reverence in her voice. "I like it when you—"

She trails away, lacking words.

Santana laughs. "I can tell," she says, because she can—Brittany feels wetter and hotter between her legs than she did before, and her eyes are almost giddy, reckless. Brittany doesn't even blush. She only stares at Santana, adoring, waiting, and hopeful. Santana doesn't keep her in anticipation for long. "It should be your birthday tomorrow, Britt," she whispers, trailing a stroke along Brittany's center.

"Jesus," Brittany says, eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks.

Though Santana has so often felt clumsy of hand in her life, she doesn't ever with Brittany, not when Brittany curls to her touch, her face and skin and whole body responding to it. Brittany opens her lips in a kiss for Santana, and Santana leans forward to take it, tracing out the insides of Brittany's mouth with her tongue at the same time as her fingers slip against Brittany's center. She wants more than anything to give Brittany that same sweetness that still plays through her own body. She wants to return it, to share it perfectly.

Her lips trail from Brittany's mouth to Brittany's cheek. "You're so beautiful," she whispers, pressing a kiss just under Brittany's eye. "Does this feel good, BrittBritt?"

Brittany moans and arches again against Santana's fingers. "Yes," she hisses, biting down on her own lip. Her hipbones roll.

And that's when it happens.

Santana's fingers slip further back against Brittany's center, discovering a new deep place that Santana had never known about before. At first, Brittany winces and Santana worries that she's hurt her, but then Santana feels Brittany's muscles move around her fingertips, hot-feathery-wet-soft. Brittany shudders.

"Oh Jesus, Santana," she moans, clamping down at Santana's side with her left hand. "That's—that's—_right there_," she whimpers.

And so Santana moves.

Her fingers slip into the deep, wet place, past the first knuckle. She progresses methodically, exploring this wonderful new part of Brittany, loving the way that Brittany's body shifts around her, like it wants to take her in, to hold her close, to keep her touch forever. She strokes deep and firm, humming and kissing at Brittany's face while she works. For a second, she wonders if she could delve further in, but she doesn't want to cause Brittany pain—she would die first—and so decides against it.

She makes a particularly strong stroke and Brittany's eyes turn to liquid, suddenly more ocean than sky. Brittany's fingers move against Santana, though Santana had forgotten about them, and Santana gasps. She can feel Brittany winding up tighter, muscles flinching around her fingers, longer and harder than before.

"What do you need, Britt?" she coos, kissing Brittany's mouth again.

Brittany can't respond with anything more than gasping. She grinds against Santana's fingers, her whole body working toward that too bright, too big, too perfect feeling. Her brow furrows in determination and her lips twitch. Santana pets her hair and cradles the back of her head. Her heart is all for Brittany, sweet and swelled for her.

An idea strikes her.

"I've got you, darlin'," Santana whispers against Brittany's skin.

And that's it.

The deep part of Brittany shudders around Santana's fingers, hard, and Brittany lets out a cry, short and truncated.

"San—!"

Brittany's hips roll, knocking against Santana's, and her fingers curl, still brushed up against Santana's core. Her motion sends a jolt through Santana's body, though not so strongly as to send Santana over into that great, dazzling feeling again. Santana watches Brittany's mouth falls open and her eyelids close. She looks like a Bernini sculpture—in ecstasy—except for real.

"You're so beautiful, Brittany," Santana says, slathering kisses to Brittany's neck and at the crux of her jaw. "You're so perfect, and I love you so much."

"I love you, Santana," Brittany gasps out.

Both girls cling to each other until Brittany finally stills and can open her eyes. They breathe together and move their hands away from each other's centers. Brittany's muscles make one last squeeze over Santana's fingertips but then relax. Santana feels like she's just won a race. She wipes her hand against the blanket and grins her widest Brittany-grin, kissing Brittany everywhere that she can reach, and tasting the sweat on Brittany's skin, as well as that bright, new smell that only comes from touching.

Brittany laughs, golden and satisfied. "Wow," she says.

Santana smirks. "Yeah?"

"It should definitely be my birthday tomorrow," Brittany says, "and then your birthday again the day after that."

"I really like doing this," Santana reveals, conspiratorial.

And Brittany just nods. "It's like I can feel how much you love me everywhere," she agrees, and Santana's heart all but collapses for her honesty.

Without thinking twice of it, Santana ducks her head forward and presses a quick, deliberate kiss to the tip of Brittany's nose. Brittany laughs and responds in kind, though she pecks Santana's lips. Both girls giggle, foolish for each other but not minding it at all. Brittany wraps her arms more tightly around Santana's waist and pulls her in, breathing deep into their embrace. Her smile couldn't be wider.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she whispers as Santana begins to run fingers through her hair, smoothing it back and separating silk from silk. Santana nods her head yes and stares into Brittany's eyes, searching out the gold dust there as if she were a miner in a stream. She smiles and bites her lips into her mouth, waiting for Brittany to speak. Brittany returns her grin. "My secret is," she pauses for effect, "that I'd like it more than anything in the whole world, I think, if you and I could share a tent with each other, just the two of us."

It's a silly idea of course, but it tugs Santana's invisible heartstrings all the same.

"I would love that, BrittBritt," Santana says earnestly, pecking another quick kiss to Brittany's lips. Her whole body still hums with the happy, amaranthine feeling that Brittany wrote into her quick.

"Just you and me?" Brittany says, a light behind her eyes.

"Just you and me, forever and ever," Santana agrees, dopey.

They lie together in silence for a long while, their bodies pulsing to the beat of each other. Santana feels good everywhere and increasingly dreamy. She plays with Brittany's hand and hair and kisses the freckles on Brittany's shoulder, learning new parts of her.

"I feel all soft inside," Brittany says after a while.

Her words send a pulse through Santana's body—one that causes Santana's thoughts to skip. "I like it," Santana says quietly and after a long pause, unable to explain anymore than that.

Without saying anything of it, Brittany lifts up her head and moves it from the blanket to Santana's chest. She nestles close against Santana's neck and sighs, contented. Santana kisses her hair. "I like everything we do together," Brittany says, "—even chores—but I especially like doing this and then just being with you afterwards."

Santana chuckles at Brittany's artlessness. She runs a finger through Brittany's hair, starting at Brittany's scalp and moving all the way down. If she could have some power grant her a single wish, it would be for her to stay here with Brittany forever, safe, sleepy, and happy.

It doesn't take long before Brittany's breathing slows and deepens. Though her eyelids seem to want to flutter closed against Santana's skin, she fights against it.

"It's all right if you go to sleep, BrittBritt," Santana whispers.

"Okay," Brittany mumbles, pressing herself even closer to Santana's body. She closes her eyes and sighs, contented down to her bones.

Santana has never felt so fond of or loyal to or grateful for anyone or anything as she has about Brittany. Even if a thousand years were to pass, Santana knows that she would go on choosing Brittany and loving Brittany with her whole heart.

Strange though it seems, Santana doesn't remember what her life was like before she met Brittany and loved her. She only knows, in the vaguest way, that she used to be so lonesome then, back before she came to the circus. Brittany is right—everything that she and Santana do together is nice because they are together when they do it.

(Santana allows Brittany to lead her away into dreams, dancing into Fairy.)

* * *

><p>When Santana awakens, the light inside the tent has changed. It's no longer the brown of early afternoon sun filtered through canvas but rather the gray of early evening. Her heart pricks in her chest, and she twitches, stirring Brittany.<p>

_Oh God._

What if they've missed the—?

The bell rings.

Whether it's the warning bell or the show bell itself, Santana doesn't know. She cringes as Brittany sits bolt upright from her chest, eyes wide and expression wild. "The fair!" Brittany gasps, scrambling to her knees.

Santana follows after, starting to look around at the mess of clothing that surrounds them. Her sashes lay strewn out beside the cot. She doesn't know what she did with her belt.

"Ken's going to kill us," she frets, snatching up her corset and starting to turn it right-side out.

Despite the panic of the moment, Brittany allows herself to grin. She ducks in, pressing a quick kiss to Santana's lips. "Worth it," she says, and both girls laugh because, honestly, it's true.

Before today, Santana had often wondered about Brittany's quick costume changes prior to and following shows. Now she sees that Brittany manages to make these quick changes by putting on both her dress and her chemise at once. Grabbing up her sash, Brittany scurries to her feet.

"I've got to go back to my tent for my costume," she says, leaning over Santana, peppering Santana's face with more kisses. She plants a peck on Santana's lips. "Thank you"—another kiss—"for everything"—and another.

Santana kisses Brittany back. "Thank you," she says and then kisses Brittany again.

Brittany forces herself to pull away, though not without whining as she goes. She looks almost as if she had stood in a windstorm, her hair in a spectacular state of disarray and her cheeks rouged with a deep burn. Somehow, the dishevelment wears well on her; Santana has never seen Brittany look so bright, vivid, and beautiful.

"I'll see you at the show," Santana promises, nudging Brittany toward the door and sending her off with another kiss.

Brittany grins, dopey. For a second, she looks as if she might say something, but then she decides against it. She shakes her head at herself and bites back her smile, disappearing out the tent flaps, sash in hand. Watching Brittany leave causes Santana's heart to flitter.

It takes Santana another several minutes to clothe herself, wash her face and hands in the steel basin, right the cot, and roll up Puck's sleeping mat so that she can restore it to its corner. As she gathers up her tambourine and cards, it strikes her that Puck never returned to the tent to fetch his gear, which either means that he's running late to the evening fair too or that the show bell hasn't yet rung. Santana hopes that the second option is in fact the case, as she can only imagine how furious Ken will be if two out of his three gypsies and the knife thrower's daughter turn up late to the same performance.

Santana's body is still abuzz as she exits her tent and starts off for the midway. Even though she knows that she'll likely hear it from Ken if it does turn out that she's late for the fair, she can't keep from smiling, all because of Brittany, Brittany, Brittany.

She makes it as far as the billboard partition before the second bell rings.

(It's still entirely worth it.)

* * *

><p>While Santana feels embarrassed to have kept her patrons waiting for her, she's also glad to see them already in line before her booth when she arrives upon the midway, as their presence will protect her from Ken's wrath.<p>

Ken glares at Santana as she slides into her booth but doesn't dare to yell at her in front of such a vast crowd. Santana hastily spreads out her peacock-colored cloth and cards upon the table. She only just manages to sit down before Ken ushers a first patron up to have a reading.

Whereas usually Santana's first readings go to young, ambitious men—braggarts and adventurers who want to know their fortunes and fight their ways to the front of her queue before meeker patrons can work up the nerve to do so—today her first patron is a crone.

The woman wears a fine dress of blue, gold, and red, but bears a wind-scarred face, as if she has spent all her life outdoors. Her cheeks and brow are deeply lined. Santana can see heartbreak etched into the woman's features along with laughter, withering anger, happiness, and confusion—a whole lifetime of hard emotions.

Santana guesses that the woman must be the same age as her grandmother was or maybe even older. The woman's hair is smoke and steel gray in alternation, her knuckles gnarled and bulging with arthritis. She doesn't wait for Santana to invite her to take a seat before she does so, and, once settled, she immediately leans across the table, seizing Santana's hand in both her own.

The touch is so sudden that it startles Santana, who isn't accustomed to patrons wanting to have physical contact with her.

Before Santana can say anything, the woman fixes her with a knowing look. "When I was your age, I too divined the feature, dear," the woman says, tracing over a crease in Santana's palm with the nail of her index finger.

The heart line.

Her words bear the slightest hint of an accent, but, from where, Santana doesn't know. Santana couldn't tell from just looking at the woman that she wasn't—that she isn't—that she's—

Heat spreads out over Santana's cheeks as she realizes that she had made a false judgment without meaning to do it. "Y-you don't divine the future anymore?" she stammers, barely remembering to mind her own accent.

"I don't," the old woman says firmly.

"Why not?" Santana asks before she can stop herself.

The old woman's expression sours. "I saw something I did not like," she says gravely. After a second's pause, she adds, "I would like for you to read my cards."

Following the morning show, Santana had managed to banish the events of the morning fair from her mind. Having spent such a perfect afternoon with Brittany, Roderick Remington and the Death card had been the furthest things from Santana's thoughts. Now that the old woman has asked for a tarot reading, the leaden dread Santana felt earlier in the day returns to her in an instant and her mouth and throat turn dry.

"A-are you sure you don't want palm reading—?" Santana stutters, tripping over her grandmother's accent, gesturing to where she and the old woman already touch hands.

The old woman apprehends Santana's anxiety. Her fingers curl over Santana's palm, and she smirks. "You don't want to read cards for me, dear?" she asks, seeming amused at Santana's unwillingness to do her job. Once again, her look turns knowing, "Has something happened with you, maybe? Something that makes you not dare to read?"

Santana gives a wry laugh, not because anything seems funny but because the old woman guessed correctly. "I saw something I didn't like," she says, repeating the old woman's own words. Though normally she would conceal the nature of that something out of a deep sense of shame for it, she feels obliged to tell this fellow fortuneteller the truth. She slips out of her grandmother's accent as though she were doffing a disguise and putting on her usual clothes. She gives another wry laugh. "When I read," she admits, "I always draw the Death card. And when I draw Death, my patron always dies."

To Santana's great shock, the old woman doesn't recoil or frown.

In fact, she smiles. "Why, I know you do, my dear," she says, her voice suddenly almost kindly. "My nephew who lives in Minnesota, he took in your act at St. James. He said you read for the richest man in town and drew Death for the poor fellow. The rich man turned up dead within the day. I was skeptical until I heard the town gossip after this morning's fair—they said you drew Death for the big city reporter." She leans in closely across the table, putting her face near Santana's. When next she speaks, she does so in an eager whisper, "My dear, you have a gift."

The old woman's statement couldn't unnerve Santana more if it were a threat. Santana shrinks back as though the old woman had slapped her and gasps, but the old woman clamps down on Santana's hand with a surprisingly firm grip, preventing her from making a full retreat.

Despite the strength of her hold, the old woman's expression is still surprisingly soft and kindly. "Please," she says clearly, keeping Santana's hand pressed between both of her own, "I am old, and I have seen so much. The cards won't speak to me, my dear. Not anymore. But you are young and have a gift."

She doesn't beg or make a scene; she just holds tight to Santana's hand, her weathered skin rough around Santana's knuckles and against her palm. Her eyes are dark like a moonless night, of a type that Santana hasn't seen since arriving at the circus. She isn't like Abuela—not really—but Santana can't help but connect the two women in her mind.

Santana remembers sitting at the table in the kitchen, the old gardener, Mr. Bradley, seated across from her, Abuela hovering at her shoulder. A tea kettle whistled from the stovetop, and sandwiches waited in the icebox for lunch.

As Santana drew her first cards, Abuela prodded her to explain what she saw, coaching Santana in Spanish as Santana herself narrated the reading to the gardener in English. As the strange humor overtook Santana for the first time, Abuela whispered in her ear.

_Tienes un talento._

Weeks later, following a death, a heartbreak, and another reading, Abuela screamed new words at Santana. She told Santana that she would burn in hell.

_Tienes una maldición._

Santana heard the new words many times as Abuela languished on her deathbed for a month. They blurred with the first words in her mind, until gift and curse became one and the same—interchangeable for the girl with a devil sitting on her shoulder.

Remembering Abuela's words causes a deep kind of shame for which Santana knows no word in English to grip Santana's stomach.

And yet.

The old woman seated before her doesn't seem to see the ill in Santana's strange gift-curse. Somehow, she seems to see it only as good, even knowing what it is. How can someone who knows the power of the cards for herself, the darkness and the strangeness in them, the angels and the devils, look upon Santana with such hopeful supplication?

Something in Santana fractures and cracks.

Santana nods towards the cards.

"Shuffle," she directs without pageant and without pretense, not bothering to reclaim her grandmother's accent.

The old woman's eyes light, excited and grateful. She does as directed, taking up the deck between her gnarled fingers. With surprising deftness for a creature so withered, she folds the cards and breaks them, interspersing layers upon layers. Needing no further instruction, she passes the deck back to Santana in three parts, a first, a second, and a last.

There's no need to narrate this reading; both Santana and the old woman know the significance behind every card and column. They also both know that there's only one card that the old woman cares to see.

Santana lays the High Priestess.

(The last safe card in the deck.)

She lays Cups and Wands, the Moon and the Star, the World and Fortune's Wheel. As Santana sets down a half-dozen, then a dozen, then eighteen cards upon the table, she suddenly begins to worry that for the first time in her career, she won't draw the Death card—that her curse won't hold up. For an instant her mind reels. She sets another card. Then another. Finally, on the last turn.

Death.

The crowd around Santana's gazebo—Santana had forgotten they were there—expresses their shock and their thrill. She hears someone say "I'll be damned!" and another person exclaim "That's the second time today! I seen her do it at the first fair, too!" She doesn't care about their reactions, though. She wasn't reading for their entertainment.

At first, Santana keeps her eyes trained to the cards; she can't bring herself to look at the old woman, not when she knows how quickly a pair of eyes can turn from eager and inviting to hating and hard. But then the old woman reaches out and finds Santana's hand across the table again. She covers it with her own.

When Santana looks up at her, she sees gratitude written into the old woman's features.

Peace.

The old woman's eyes shine, wetted, but no tears fall to her face. Trembling, she stands from her seat and motions across the table, coaxing Santana to stand with her. When Santana does so—dumbly, helplessly, unable to do anything else—the woman reaches out, cradling Santana's head in her hands, her palms warm upon Santana's ears and cheeks. The old woman purses her lips, closes her eyes, and, quavering, pulls Santana toward her. With all the reverence of a devotee at worship, she presses a kiss first to Santana's right cheek and then to her left.

_"Multumesc, draga mea,"_ she says, her brow rested on Santana's.

(Santana doesn't understand, but then she thinks she does.)

* * *

><p>Normally, Santana feels awful after she reads tarot for someone, but, at present, she doesn't feel anything about it—not good, not bad. She reads palms for four people after the old woman goes away.<p>

Having already given up the ruse that she has an accent, Santana is able to narrate her readings in unbroken English. Surprisingly, the people of Elma don't seem to mind having such an unexotic fortuneteller, perhaps because they already trust her prowess for having witnessed her work with both Mr. Remington and the old woman.

When the show bell rings and the midway pitch clears, Santana fully expects Ken to lay into her for arriving late to the fair, but he doesn't.

"Miss," he says in a very thick voice. He gestures for her to stand up and follow him to the backstage but daren't say anything more to her than that.

It takes a second for Santana to notice that his little beady eyes are wider than usual and another second after that to realize that he actually seems afraid of her. Considering that circus folk in general and Ken in particular are an immensely superstitious lot, Santana can only imagine that her exchange with the old woman struck a certain degree of fear into Ken concerning her and her abilities. She tries not to smirk too much as Ken refuses to even look at her crossing the midway pitch. He doesn't say a word to her as they pass into the backstage.

Just like at the matinee, Puck turns up only just before the show starts, this time dripping sweat and with dirt on his face.

"You can't keep missing fairs, Noah!" Rachel scolds him. "What will Mr. Adams say?"

"Nothing if you don't blab to him about it!" Puck insists, taking his place amongst the other knights.

Not for the first time in the day, Santana wonders what on earth could possibly keep the boy who loves the circus from performing at his job.

Whereas Santana felt like she was drowning going into the big top earlier in the day, now she feels as if she's coming home. She and Rachel pass through the shadows at the back of the tent and step forth into the lighted ring just in time to see Brittany spin a circle in her pretty white show costume.

The welling of emotions Santana felt holding Brittany in her tent after they had touched each other returns to her, filling up her chest and throat and blurring her eyes with tears. Brittany seems less to take in stage light and more to give it off as if she glows. Santana can hardly hurry over fast enough to join her. She throws her arms around Brittany's waist, gathering Brittany in from behind.

"Hey, beautiful girl," she mumbles against Brittany's skin. "I missed you."

Brittany grabs onto Santana's arms around her waist. "I missed you, too."

Earlier in the day, after Santana read cards for Mr. Remington, it seemed impossible to dance, but now it's easy to. Brittany twirls Santana, and her colorful skirts spin, a dizzy rainbow. Santana's heart beats out love in her chest.

(Everything that Brittany and Santana do together is nice because they are together when they do it.)

Following the knight sketch, Santana perches at the aperture at the back of the tent, almost dreamy with thoughts of Brittany. The sky overhead stains the most vibrant oranges and pinks, ablaze above the big top, and then slowly darkens to the most soothing shade of indigo.

After a while, Stevie Evans appears at Santana's side. He peels back the tent flap a bit further so that he can see the show going on inside the big top. Santana shifts to allow him more space.

"Have you had a good birthday, Ms. Santana?" he asks her after a few minutes. He doesn't look away from where the Equestrienne Coterie rides circles around the rings.

Santana searches herself. "I have," she says, not untruthfully.

Stevie nods, pleased for Santana. Several seconds pass before Stevie asks a second question, this time in a little peep of a voice, "May I take your hand?"

Santana smiles, "You may."

Wearing a wide grin not unlike Sam's, Stevie reaches for Santana's hand, taking it for himself as he and Santana continue to watch the show, silent but together.

When it comes time for the gypsy act, Santana wishes Stevie farewell and joins Rachel and Puck in the ring. Puck seems determined to make up for skiving the fairs and turning up late to the performances and does so by putting on what must be his most daring fire dance yet. He spins his lighted staff under his legs and above his head, turning it so quickly that it blurs into a streak of white against the air inside the big top. The audience gasps as he tosses his implement ten feet into the air and catches it while performing a whirl.

As the band plays the final notes of their mysterious gypsy fugue, Puck wears his most determined devil smirk. With firelight painting him hell-red and dogged, he takes a running leap and throws himself into a round-off, flipping feet overhead, touching his staff to the ground, righting himself, and blowing a great spate of flame into the air like a dragon.

Santana must prevent herself from applauding along with the audience. As she and Puck exit the big top together to make way for the Little Malibran act, she can't help but commend him. "Puck, that trick, it was—it was—," she babbles.

Puck smirks his devil smirk though his eyes seem bright. "I used to end every show that way, back before I almost burned my leg off," he says. "I hadn't felt good enough to do it until today. You think I should make it regular again?"

"Sure, I do," says Santana.

Puck grins at her. "You got it, ladybird," he says, reaching over to muss her hair as they part ways, him going over to sit beside the fire next to Sam and Mr. Evans and her taking her spot at the tent aperture, waiting for the knife throwing act.

While Mr. Pierce still bears his limp and seems as sullen as ever coming into the ring, Brittany must have taken a page from Puck's book, for she seems utterly determined to delight the audience—or maybe just Santana.

First, Brittany dances between the backboard and the satchel, adding little spins and pirouettes to her routine. Then, when she takes her place before the target, she puts on a great show of making funny faces at her father, lifting up her eyebrows and turning her mouth into strange shapes as they establish their eye contact.

For once, the Pierce's act comes across as almost more comic than dangerous. Even Mr. Pierce acts vaguely amused, shaking his head and biting back what might be the first smile Santana has ever seen him attempt to make as Brittany widens her eyes at the knives that halo her head, feigning like she hadn't expected him to throw them.

The audience laughs and laughs at Brittany's antics and so does Santana. When Brittany turns a cartwheel going to retrieve the apple from her satchel, Santana's heart blooms with adoration in her chest—and especially when Ken shouts from his place at the flaps to the big top, "Quit your monkeying, Pierce!" and Brittany's only response to him is to perform a handstand on her way back to the board.

* * *

><p>After the show, Puck tells Santana to run along to the mess pit—he'll catch up to her later. Not needing him to tell her twice, Santana scampers over the grass, enjoying the cricket orchestra playing in the tall weeds along the tent rows and the brightness of the moon overhead, beaming down with a wide, white face. Her whole heart feels happy and her body light.<p>

"Happy birthday!" Rory calls to her as she ducks past him entering the mess pit.

Santana takes a place at the table, sitting up on her knees as she waits for Brittany to find her. The whole company babbles, enlivened with the same high energy that powered the night show, everyone talking all at once and acting friendly towards one another. After not too long, Brittany appears around the back of the chuck, still gliding on tiptoe as if she were dancing.

"Hey, darlin'!" she greets, coming over to join Santana at the table. "How's—?"

She doesn't finish her question before a commotion on the edge of the mess pit interrupts her.

At first, Santana isn't sure what's going on. Whereas just a second ago, all the voices in the mess pit were lively and untroubled, now she hears strains of concern and distress. She can't pick out words at first. She looks to the source of the disturbance.

Hiram Berry stands just beside the hearth, holding a newspaper in his hands. Mr. Evans flanks him, as do Ken, Finn Hudson, and Blaine Anderson. The men all stand together, the quadroon manservant just a few paces off from them, hovering protectively beside Rachel. Mr. Berry taps on the newspaper with his fingers, as if to emphasize a particular passage. He reads aloud.

_"'The Cresco Plain Dealer has breaking news! We have learned that celebrity reporter Mister Roderick Remington of the Associated Press has been brutally murdered while stationed in the city of Elma, Howard County. After reporting upon the visiting J.P.A. & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie, Mister Remington took his supper at a popular dining establishment in town._

_While waiting upon his main course, Mister Remington was accosted by one Mister J. Tiebert Callum, who accused Mister Remington before the whole dining room of having had improper dealings with Missus Tiebert Callum. When Mister Remington responded despitefully to Mister Tiebert Callum's indictment, Mister Tiebert Callum reacted by producing a Colt revolver from the pocket of his waistcoat and shooting Mister Remington at close range in the head. Witnesses report that Mister Remington was dead before he fell into his soup bowl. Mister Tiebert Callum attempted to flee the scene but was detained by two young waiters who grabbed him by the tails of his coat._

_Since the town of Elma hasn't its own law enforcement, the Howard County sheriff's department has been contacted to manage the murder investigation. More word forthcoming on the details of the case, including discussion of Missus Tiebert Callum's whereabouts and her alleged involvement with Mister Remington.'"_

The smile that had been on Santana's face dies away. Suddenly, she feels as if she had been the one shot in the head.

She drew Death for Mr. Remington's, and now just hours later, a man has murdered him.

She sinks down onto her bench.

_Oh God. Oh God. Oh God._

Everything drains from Santana, including the color from her face and the happiness in her breast. She looks to Brittany, stricken, wondering if this isn't some sort of terrible delusion. That someone should murder Mr. Remington just after Mr. Remington was at the circus—it couldn't have been worse if Santana's shoulder devil were to have dictated the directions himself.

(Santana thinks she might be sick.)

Brittany gapes at Santana with the widest, most worried eyes Santana has ever seen, as stricken as if she herself had been the one to draw the Death card for Mr. Remington rather than Santana. Brittany reaches out to take Santana's hand but doesn't manage to say anything before Puck appears in the mess pit, stepping up beside the table.

He wears a very confused expression.

"What's going on?" he asks, glancing around in bewilderment at the company, everyone aflutter in response to Mr. Berry's news. "Ladybird, you all right? What happened? Are you feeling all right? Brittany, is she—?"

Santana laughs without meaning to. "I've killed Mr. Remington," she announces, in the same way one might say that she had forgotten to water the garden or to put sugar in her tea. She laughs again, strangled. "Britt, I killed Mr. Remington," she repeats.

"Killed Mr. Remington?" Puck parrots. "Ladybird, what the Sam Hill—?"

No one responds to Puck's questions. Brittany clambers off of her bench and climbs over the table, not wasting any time getting to Santana. She slides in at Santana's side, wrapping Santana in a tight, almost rib-bruising embrace. Her face is hot against Santana's, and she kisses Santana's ear in plain view of Puck.

"Oh, Santana," she says, pulling Santana in close to her. "Oh, Santana, no, no."

Whereas normally, Brittany's touch is enough to soothe Santana in an instant, Santana finds that, at present, nothing, not even being wrapped in Brittany's arms, can comfort her. Her whole body trembles. She's only vaguely aware of Puck setting something down on the tabletop and leaning over to ask Sam—recently arrived from the other side of the mess pit—what's going on.

As Sam mumbles out the details of Mr. Remington's murder, Santana catches snatches of the company talking about her—of Ken saying that he felt a wicked presence when Santana drew Death at the morning fair and some of Ma Jones' kitchen girls reminding everyone that the young millionaire in Minnesota died after Santana drew Death for him, too.

For a few hours, Santana had truly believed that cards were just cards and that everyone makes his own fate, but now Mr. Remington has proven her wrong.

Santana leans into Brittany's embrace and stares, seeing everything but comprehending nothing.

It takes her a long while to recognize what Puck set down on the table.

(A folded bath towel, tied up in a clumsy red bow.)

* * *

><p>Santana doesn't feel hungry, so Brittany offers to take her back to her tent while Puck has his supper. The girls don't speak on their way out of the mess pit. They hold hands and walk along slowly, casting long shadows under the moonlight. When they descend the incline which separates the higher camp from the lower, Brittany gives Santana's palm a squeeze. Santana honestly wonders how Brittany can't be angry at or frightened of her. She perfectly predicted Mr. Remington's death. There's something wrong about her, a touch of the devil in her.<p>

When they reach Santana's tent, Brittany pulls back the flap and ushers Santana inside. Darkness cloaks them so that they can't see each other's features, but Brittany moves skillfully through the pitch, removing Santana's bangles from her wrist and stooping down to unclasp the coin bracelet at Santana's ankle. Lifting Santana's skirts and petticoats up past Santana's knee, Brittany kisses Santana's kneecap, every part of Santana precious to her. She sets the jewelry upon the overturned vegetable crate and returns to Santana, standing before Santana and smoothing back locks of Santana's hair.

"Say something," she entreats, her voice soft and low.

Santana shrugs against the deep, needling pain in her chest. "I have a curse, Britt," she says simply, not sure what more there is to it than that.

Though she had tried to fight the notion ever since she arrived at the circus, Santana knows that it's no use. Every word that her grandmother ever screamed at her is true. She's a bad omen. She's cursed. She has a devil with her, so strong and evil and robust that she shan't ever be able to shake him. Whenever she lays cards, she'll put down Death, and whenever she puts down Death, she'll cause another person to die.

Santana didn't know Mr. Remington well, and what she did know of him, she didn't like. Still, she hates to think that he took a bullet to the head on her account.

Even the man who tried to blackmail the circus doesn't deserve that end.

(No one does.)

Santana expects that Brittany will try to tell her that her curse isn't real, that it doesn't matter, that there's no more connection between Mr. Remington's murder and Santana's cards than there is between what Ma Jones serves for supper and the latest political happenings at the capital.

But Brittany never does just as Santana expects.

Rather, Brittany waits a long while to speak, continuing to stroke through Santana's hair. Santana can't see Brittany's expression through the dark, though they stand facing each other with only a few inches between them, but she can imagine it, concerned, soft, and heartbroken for Santana's heartbreak.

Finally, Brittany says, "I don't know what it means that you always draw that card, Santana. I don't know why this happens to you. But I do know that it doesn't make you a bad person and that you're not doing anything wrong. My daddy dares death, your daddy fought it, and maybe you can see it when other people can't. I don't think that's all there is to you, though. You do so much more than that—so much that's good that you don't even see. I don't know if I believe in curses, but even if you are cursed, I don't care, anyway. I still love you no matter what you do or what happens. And I'd still let you read my cards any day. I trust you, darlin'."

Brittany's fingers tangle in Santana's hair, and, in the next second, she pulls Santana into a kiss. Santana had never thought that one could describe a kiss as being strong before, but that's what this kiss is—strong and sure, like Brittany means to hold Santana up by it, to keep her from falling. It steals Santana's breath away, the hard press of Brittany's lips against hers, the way their noses and chins crush together. Brittany's mouth tastes hot, and she nods into the kiss again and again until finally pulling away.

In a much smaller, quieter voice than before, she says, "If you need to cry, I'll just stay here. I'll hold you."

Somehow, Santana hadn't realized that she did need to cry until Brittany said so. Immediately, tears cloud her eyes, and a crack opens in her throat. "Britt," she chokes, as pathetic as a child gravely hurt. A sob breaks in her like a wave crashing hard upon jagged cliffs. She throws out her arms, wanting.

Brittany doesn't disappoint.

She catches Santana up, supporting Santana's weight, pressing the two of them so tightly together that there is scarcely any space between them. Her left arm wraps around the small of Santana's back, and her right arm moves to cradle Santana's head in her hand, stroking through Santana's hair.

"I've got you," she promises, stumbling with Santana over to the cot. "I've got you."

If it weren't already so dark, Santana wouldn't be able to see through all her crying. She allows Brittany to pull her up onto the cot, to lay them both down, Brittany underneath and herself curled in Brittany's lap. Brittany cradles Santana's head in her arms, pressing kisses to her hair and holding her. Never once does she try to shush Santana or dissuade Santana from tears. She allows Santana to fall apart, draped around her like a blanket.

Santana cries so hard and for so long that after a while she can't make more sounds. Her sobs run silent and breathless, and her whole ribcage aches with fractured-glass pain.

Santana cries for the old gardener, Mr. Bradley, who had only wanted to seek his fortune on good advice from whatever powers exist; she cries for Abuela, whose love for her so abruptly turned to hate; for Papa, who hadn't been superstitious at all but met his end just like the rest; for the millionaire in Minnesota and his reckless buggy ride; for the old woman who knew enough to come to Santana for Death; and even for Mr. Remington, the dead man who would have been the end of the circus if he had only lived; but most of all, Santana cries because beyond them is Brittany, who loves Santana senselessly, recklessly, and wonderfully, though Santana certainly doesn't deserve it.

"Don't ever leave me," she pleads. "Please, Britt, stay with me forever."

"I'll stay," Brittany promises, peppering more kisses to Santana's skin and hair. "I won't ever leave you, Santana. I've got you now. I've got you."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: I feel extraordinarily lucky to get to work with not one but two brilliant betas and an amazing Spanish translator. A thousand-million thank yous to Han for knowing the rules of my story so amazingly well and for going above and beyond the call of beta duty. A thousand-million thank yous to the wonderful Dr. Ruth for being so wonderfully insightful and such a good reader. She does so much and helps me to up my game in ways I can't even explain. A thousand-million thank yous to the fantastic Lu for translating for me. She always makes sure I say what I mean with the Spanish. Also, I dedicate this chapter to Alice. Happy birthday, bb!<strong>

**This is chapter 13/15. We're almost to our journey's end, guys. Thanks for sticking with the story for so long.**

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**(No se puede eludir la Muerte, Santana. Viene para todos.) : (No one can escape Death, Santana. It comes for us all.)**_

_**La Muerte viene para todos. : Death comes for us all.**_

_**Maldita : "Little damned girl"**_

_**Malagüera : "Evil omen"**_

_**La niña tiene un poco del Diablo. : The girl has a touch of the Devil.**_

_**Tienes un talento. : You have a gift.**_

_**Tienes una maldición. : You have a curse.**_


	16. An Honest Woman

**Note: This chapter contains intense situations and potentially triggering material. If you need to know the nature of the trigger, please PM me and I can tell you what it is, no questions asked.**

**Chapter 14: An Honest Woman**

**Friday, July 8th, 1898: Kenyon, Minnesota**

When the old gardener died, Santana wringed her hands so hard that soon she couldn't play the piano anymore for the ache in them—that's why Abuela decided to make Santana lay the cards again.

When Abuela died, Santana sickened. She lost her appetite and forgot how to laugh. Almost immediately, the dark started to scare her, and she remembered the monsters that haunted her childhood nightmares, appreciating for the first time how awfully long one night could be. Only with great difficulty could she silence her thoughts after sundown. She fell asleep only by accident—tumbling into dreams with a book in her lap, like Alice down the rabbit hole.

(She never felt rested afterwards.)

Every evening, she would beg Papa to stay with her after supper, though she had known better than to do so since she was a child. During the daytimes, she felt so lonely that she even invited the new gardener boy, Puck, inside the house for lemonade and rolls. She either talked too much or not enough. Her face turned gaunt. Eventually, she stopped reading—that's why Papa finally made her lay the cards for him.

When Papa died, Santana didn't have time to pick up any strange new habits; she carried guilt around in the pit of her belly, like she had swallowed a stone.

No matter how she tried, she couldn't reckon why it was that everyone she most trusted had turned out to be wrong about everything in the end.

Santana didn't have a gift.

Cards weren't only cards.

Death didn't come for everyone.

(Just everyone but Santana.)

(Everyone Santana had loved.)

* * *

><p>It's the sick, stone feeling that stirs Santana from her sleep—that and the chill in the morning air. It's too cold and too dark. Brittany isn't with Santana anymore. Without meaning to do it, Santana groans.<p>

Puck hears her.

"You awake, ladybird?" he hisses through the darkness, his voice somewhere below her and off to one side.

Santana forces herself to sit up and turn toward him. Her body feels lonely without Brittany and worn out from crying, thick in the throat and sore in the ribs. She rubs fists against her closed eyes and sees stars blaze against the blackness.

"Where's Britt?" she mumbles, her voice scratchy and raw.

Puck shifts, maybe sitting up from his mat. Santana hears him wipe his face, cleaning sleep from his eyes. "Old Man Pierce came looking for her around midnight," he explains. "He didn't think it was right for her to spend the night in my tent. We're just lucky I was still sitting outside playing Bezique with Blaine or else he might've given me a licking. Anyway, Brittany said she'd find you at breakfast, ladybird—no worries."

For a second, silence prevails. Santana sets her feet down on the grass and breathes deeply, steadying herself. Puck moves again upon his mat, probably shifting to his knees. Santana can't ever remember it being this cold in the morning in all the time since she's been at the circus; she shivers and wraps her arms around herself. It almost doesn't seem like summer anymore.

Finally, Puck draws a whistling breath through his teeth, steeling himself for something. "I could maybe talk to Mr. Adams for you, if you like—about the cards," he offers tentatively. "Maybe we could get you a crystal ball or a planchette board instead."

He tries to take on a light tone, like what he's said isn't any great thing.

But it is.

Of course, Puck's offer shouldn't take Santana so much by surprise. For all his rough edges, Puck is often kind to Santana and even reckless in his care for her, to the point where if Santana were a different person, and Puck were a different person, Santana would probably feel very grateful to Puck for everything he had done for her since her father's death. As it is, Santana feels grateful to Puck for this one thing, at least.

(She knows how he hates to disappoint Mr. Adams.)

Though he can't see her face, Puck senses Santana's shock. He shuffles, crawling over to the cot and setting his hands on Santana's knees. He makes no pretense at lightness anymore.

"You'll probably have to keep up the act for a while yet, ladybird. It took a few days to get your cards here. I imagine it'll take more than a few days to get you a replacement prop, too. And we'll have to eat the cost of the cards, I'm sure. This circus ain't made of money, and it won't be even after Mr. Fabray signs them damn papers. But if it's worth it to you, it's worth it to me." He pauses, wetting his lips, and then squeezes Santana's knees. "Things will get better soon, ladybird, I promise."

Yesterday, it astonished Santana very much to conclude that she had somehow become friends with Ma Jones without realizing it. Today, it astonishes her even more to conclude the same thing in regards to Puck.

Gratitude wells in Santana's chest, and, giving not a second thought to it, she throws her arms around Puck's neck, hugging him to her. Puck obviously hadn't expected Santana to embrace him and stiffens in her arms.

"Thank you, Noah," Santana says, holding Puck close to her.

It takes a full second for Puck to relax. He lets out a breath against her skin, and his hold loosens on her knees. He sounds as surprised as Santana feels.

"You're welcome," he says, reaching up to slowly, hesitantly, give Santana a pat on the back.

* * *

><p>Santana shivers while Puck tears down their tent, her face still damp from her morning wash, shirt and skirts billowing against the wind. Thick clouds obscure the stars and the moon above. Puck fumbles to dig up the tent stakes from the ground, his fingers clumsy from the chill in the air. By the time he finally succeeds in piling all of the tent gear together and gathering his and Santana's luggage, almost everyone else has quit their tent row.<p>

"Come on, ladybird," he coaxes, offering Santana his elbow.

Puck and Santana arrive at the mess pit to find it much more dimly lit than usual. The hearth fire struggles against the wind. Shane Tinsley crouches alongside it, attempting to build up the flame with a poker, rearranging the kindling here and there.

"I'll get it, sugar," he promises as Ma Jones passes by him, carrying a coffee pot.

Ma winces at the endearment, but Shane doesn't seem to notice.

"Have a seat, ladybird," Puck says, steering Santana onto the bench at the table. "I'll go grab you some breakfast."

Santana is about to tell Puck that she doesn't feel hungry when Brittany appears, coming up beside Santana from someplace off across the mess pit. Even in the wavering firelight, Santana sees the tiredness in Brittany's features—the pout at Brittany's lips, the sullenness at Brittany's eyes.

It wouldn't surprise Santana if Brittany hadn't slept a wink last night.

"I'm sorry I had to leave," Brittany apologizes, dropping down onto the bench, taking Santana's free hand in her own. Her voice is quiet and low.

Over the past few days, Santana has become accustomed to feeling two ways at once rather regularly, but now she doesn't just feel "two ways;" she feels all sorts of things—undeserving of anything nice or comforting; but also needy and childishly wanting for Brittany to hold her; ashamed of her curse; guilty that Mr. Remington won't ever breathe or walk or be again; suddenly worried that Mr. Remington might have a widow and children somewhere; anxious for Puck to speak to Mr. Adams about her card reading; distrustful of the world; hurt; unsure of everything but just one true thing.

Were they alone, Santana would have already thrown herself into Brittany's arms or even laid herself down in Brittany's lap to rest. As it is, she latches onto Brittany's fingers, twining their hands together on the bench.

It isn't exactly what she would like to do, but it will do, and it's enough.

"That's all right," Santana says.

Brittany understands. She squeezes Santana's fingers and offers Santana a very soft, very tired smile, watching Santana with something even more than her usual careful attention, searching Santana's face the way a headwaiter might search a wine goblet for cracks, sensitive to even the slightest sign of distress or fissure in the glass.

(Santana has never seen a person seem so concerned for the welfare of someone else.)

Were they alone, Santana imagines that Brittany would probably want to ask her how she slept and whether or not she had bad dreams. As it is, Brittany remains silent until Puck returns with Santana's breakfast and then only offers to "scooch in" so that Puck can have a seat on the bench at Santana's other side.

Since Santana isn't especially hungry herself, she ends up sharing her meal with Brittany. Neither girl talks at all, though Puck goes on and on to Finn Hudson about all the preparations that the boys will have to make at their next camp, looking forward to the down day weddings.

In the confusion from last night, Santana had forgotten that today would be Friday and tomorrow Saturday and that Arthur Adams would soon marry Quinn Fabray and Shane Tinsley Ma Jones. Remembering the upcoming nuptials causes Santana's already tattered heart to snag on something in her chest. On impulse, she searches out first Sam and then Ma Jones amidst the company.

Sam sits with his family, Stacey and Stevie all but hanging from him as he attempts to eat his hotcakes. Sam's father talks to him about something, and Sam nods, only half-listening. A ways off from where the Evans family sits, Ma Jones moves a plate of hotcakes from the griddle to the serving table. Shane Tinsley offers to take the plate from her, but she bats him off as if he were a bad idea.

Anyone who didn't already know that Sam and Ma were heartbroken probably wouldn't be able to tell that they are, but Santana knows, and she can tell.

She sees it in the way Sam seems to shrink every time Shane Tinsley speaks to Ma Jones from across the mess. She sees it in the way Ma can't seem to stand still in one place even long enough to stir hotcake batter with her wooden spoon.

Theirs isn't the only restlessness in the mess pit, though.

Everyone seems in an uneasy mood, whether it's because of what happened to Mr. Remington last night or because of the foul weather this morning. Every time the wind whips, Ken curses, and Ma's kitchen girls get all in a dither. Low, surreptitious whispers hiss out from where people gather their heads close together in conference. It's a sideways glance here, a pensive look there. Thunder grumbles in the distance, and everyone starts to clear their plates, whether they've finished eating or not.

On the way to the wagon bay, Santana overhears Finn Hudson mumbling to Puck: "—said that she predicted everything exactly how it was! He swore on his life that he heard her tell that reporter that he'd have romance and make secret deals, and then you heard what was in the papers last night! What if she's, I dunno, a witch or something? All I'm saying is that I'd not cross her if—"

(The stone in Santana's stomach sinks lower.)

Puck elbows Finn hard in the ribs and snarls at him through gritted teeth. "Shut up, idiot! If she's a witch, she's only half of what your ma is. There ain't nothin' wrong with her!" he insists.

Though Puck speaks through his teeth, his voice carries enough for Santana to hear it, and he seems to know as much. When he glances over at Santana, he wears a guilty look—not because of anything he's said but because of Finn's accusations. Santana can tell by the look on Puck's face that he hopes she didn't overhear his and Finn's conversation. All at once, he is very much his little-boy self, his eyes large and anxious, his expression sorry.

Santana tries to pretend she doesn't know that Puck and Finn were talking about her, but—

A wail cuts through the air, deep and guttural, almost as loud as thunder.

It takes Santana one second to realize that the wail doesn't come from a human being and another to find the sound's source; the elephants stand in file on the far side of the wagon bay, towering over the various vehicles arranged upon the grass. Methuselah tosses back his massive head and arches his trunk toward the sky. He lets out another mighty bellow as more thunder rumbles from the clouds.

Usually, the elephants lead the morning exodus from camp without incident, following their handlers' commands both immediately and perfectly, but today the herd seems reluctant to take its leave. Methuselah stamps his great tree trunk legs, setting himself between his cows and his handlers, who jab at him with long, sharp sticks and shout in a language that Santana doesn't understand.

Methuselah is a shadow and a monolith against the darkness. He shakes his saber tusks, rebuffing the men, who look so small and fragile in comparison to him that they could well be toys in his nursery if he were a human child. Deborah and Bathsheba trumpet at Methuselah's heels, taking their cues from the old bull and refusing to move, no matter how much the circus staff prods at them from afar.

Considering that only a few hundred yards stand between her and the elephants, Santana can't help but startle.

Throughout all her time at the circus, Santana has never known Methuselah be anything but gentle; she doesn't like to see him so agitated and fears what might happen should he rebel against his handlers outright.

She isn't the only one who feels that way.

Brittany stiffens at Santana's side, and Puck and Finn halt in their tracks. Momentarily, both boys' eyes turn wide as if they'd never seen the elephants misbehave so badly before, but then Puck recovers himself, switching out his fear for meanness in a trice.

He punches Finn hard in the bicep. "There's your bad hoodoo!" he snarls, pointing at Methuselah.

"Ow!" Finn cringes, touching at his hurt.

Santana looks to Brittany, wondering if the girl who knows more about elephants than any other person at the circus understands what's so upset them. Brittany wears a fretful expression, biting her lip and furrowing her brow.

"They don't like walking around during an electrical storm," Brittany mutters, gesturing to the clouds that churn behind Methuselah's silhouette. "Their heads are closer to the lightning than everyone else's. They'll calm down once we're on the train." She considers the situation for a few seconds longer before finding Santana's hand again. "Come on, darlin'," she says, leading Santana towards the closest wagon.

Not everyone seems to think that Methuselah's commotion is so harmless, though.

As Santana and Brittany take their places in the bed of the wagon, Santana overhears other circus folk around them talking along the same lines as Puck, saying that a spooked elephant is a sure sign of bad luck to come.

"Old J.P. is crazy if he thinks today's shows will go over well. What do you want to bet there'll be some sort of calamity?"

"Animals can tell these things, you know."

"Ain't nothing good will come of this."

"Probably the ghost of Roderick Remington that's got the elephants so skittish."

"There's something unnatural in this camp."

Santana cowers against the side of the wagon box, keeping close to Brittany. The stone in her stomach weighs even heavier than it did when she woke up. Finn's right, for once—Santana accurately predicted more than just Mr. Remington's death. Her whole reading for Mr. Remington was spot-on.

Maybe there is something unnatural in the camp.

(What does it mean when a sham of a fortuneteller tells her fortunes true?)

Brittany guides Santana's head onto her shoulder, holding her close as Puck and Finn clamber onto the wagon behind them. Methuselah continues to bellow and stamp in the distance. When the earth quakes, it's impossible to say whether it's from the elephants or from the thunder.

* * *

><p>Despite their protestations, the elephants do come along with the rest of the processional, though only as their handlers jab sticks into their flanks to make them walk.<p>

(Santana can hardly stand to look at either the men or the elephants.)

Blustering winds follow the circus to the train depot, chasing the company members quickly through downtown Elma. It takes a few minutes for the yardmen at the depot to ready the train for circus cargo, and during the lull Santana, Brittany, Puck, and Finn meet up with Blaine, Rory, Sam, and Kurt. All eight youths board the same train car, whereupon the boys immediately breaking out a tin of chaw—Kurt abstains, and the rest partake—and a deck of playing cards for euchre. Brittany and Santana settle into the corner nearest the game.

"You can lie down, if you like," Brittany says, offering up the sling of her skirt as a place for Santana to rest her head.

Santana gladly accepts Brittany's invitation, feeling much like she did as a child when she was hurt or sick and longed for someone to hold her. She nestles down against tatty blue, closing her eyes just as the train begins to move.

Brittany hums a little bit. "If the boys weren't here, I'd sing you a song," she says softly. She strokes through Santana's hair, absentminded.

"I thought you said you didn't sing by yourself," Santana mumbles.

Brittany pauses for a second, considering, and says, just so, with a shrug, "I could sing for you."

(For a moment, the stone in Santana's stomach disappears. All she feels is love.)

* * *

><p>Santana drifts in and out of a shallow, dreamless sleep while Brittany strokes her hair, only stirring as bright shafts of sunlight start to shine through the open boxcar door. Santana opens her eyes to find the euchre game still in full swing, Rory tucking stray cards under his suspenders and Puck cussing so floridly that it surprises Santana she didn't wake sooner.<p>

Blaine checks his hand against the trump. "Gentlemen, I'm out," he says, leaning back against the cabin wall, setting his cards down passively at his side. Puck and Finn boo his decision, but Blaine waves off their jeers in polite dismissal, opening his jacket to produce a folded newspaper from within his waistcoat. He holds the paper aloft for the other boys to see and then shakes it out to read from. "Mr. Berry very kindly donated this to me after breakfast," he says, smirking from beneath the brim of his trilby hat. "Let's see what's happening in the sporting world, shall we?"

"Is there a National League game today?" Finn asks, suddenly excited.

By now, Brittany has begun to shift above Santana. She doesn't remove Santana from her lap, but she does lean forward, grabbing for something, her belly pressed down against Santana's ear.

When Santana realizes that Brittany is after Blaine's abandoned cards, she spares Brittany the trouble of bending over, reaching out to claim the hand from her better angle, handing the cards to Brittany from below. Though she can't see Brittany's face, Santana knows that Brittany smiles as she begins examining the suits.

"Thank you, darlin'," Brittany says, and Santana feels her gratitude as much as hears it in her words.

Blaine answers Finn, "Indeed there is! The Boston Beaneaters will engage the Philadelphia Phillies in Philadelphia, coming off a loss there yesterday—"

Puck interrupts, speaking around a fat wad of quid, "The Beaneaters will wallop Philly! I'll put down a dollar on it for anyone who's in."

"You're already down two dollars," Sam reminds him.

Brittany taps Sam on the oversized clown shoe. "I want to play in Blaine's place," she announces.

"You can't play cards," Finn scoffs.

"Who says she can't?" Sam challenges, daring Finn to make more of it.

For an instant, everyone falls silent, and all of the boys except for Sam eye Brittany warily, though none of them seems up to the task of explaining why it would be vulgar for her to join the game.

Blaine pulls down the brim of his hat, hiding himself so that he doesn't have to make the decision regarding his cards. Puck rolls his eyes, altogether annoyed with the debate. Finn and Rory seem stupefied, like they can't believe Sam would want Brittany to play. Kurt bites his lip, uncomfortable. Sam wears an uncharacteristically mean look, like he'll pop anyone who tries to prevent Brittany from doing as she pleases.

(Santana suspects that lately Sam has probably had about enough in the way of rules keeping people from doing things that make them happy.)

The boys in opposition to Brittany playing fumble, but then Rory seems to settle on a good answer to Sam's question. "She can't pay up!" he objects, indicating the dollar bill protruding from his shirt pocket.

"Neither can Puck," Sam counters.

Everyone _oohs_ and Brittany fans out her cards in her hand as if she were a gambler.

Puck has the decency to shake his head. "Let her play," he concedes, blushing.

With a nod to Puck, Brittany snatches Blaine's trilby hat from atop Blaine's head, transplanting it to her own. She puts on her false proper accent. "I've got my hat," she says, cocking the trilby at a jaunty angle and giving Santana a nudge in her lap, "and I've got my good luck charm. Bets are off, gentlemen."

The boys let up another chorus of _oohs_, and Finn elbows Puck hard in the ribs. "Bet you wish you had that good luck charm for yourself," he teases.

"Shut up," Puck says, still blushing.

Santana can only imagine what her grandmother would think of her, lying in the lap of the girl she loves while the girl gambles and boasts with such a ragtag gang of fellas. Of course, Santana doesn't mind the situation much herself. She likes being close to Brittany, peeking up at the cards from the safety of Brittany's lap. She feels secure and wanted.

(She could stay where she is for forever and a day.)

* * *

><p>Brittany has no idea how to play euchre, but she doesn't seem to mind.<p>

By midway through the game, she's collected Rory's corncob pipe in addition to Blaine's trilby hat; she bites the pipe between her teeth, unlit and with no tobacco in it, and carries on like a high stakes gambler.

"Alone!" she calls, noting the trump.

Her gaming partner, Sam, starts. "Are you sure, Britt?" he asks, sending her a nervous glance over his hand.

Brittany nods, laying down a Jack beside the trump card on the boxcar floor. All of the boys around her groan; the Jack is the wrong color.

"Britt," Sam says gently, "that's not a match. You should take it back."

"Oops," Brittany says, retrieving her card. She tries again, laying down a Jack of the correct color. The card also happens to match the trump suit. The boys all groan again, this time for a different reason.

"How does she do that?" Finn complains, throwing down his hand in despair.

Brittany looks at Santana, still nestled in her lap, and winks, her cat-grin smug as can be. Santana smiles as Brittany collects the trick and takes another pretend puff on her pipe, as pleased as if she had won the hand on purpose or by strategy rather than just blind luck.

Since departing the depot at Elma, the train has rambled through acres and acres of sprawling cornfields and vast, untended prairie. The sun has steadily risen higher in the sky, warming the earth and illuminating the euchre game through the open boxcar door.

But then the train travels over a sloping hill, descending into a forested valley.

And then it passes under cloud cover.

Suddenly, it's dark again inside the cabin. Thunder cracks outside the car.

"Goddamn it!" Puck curses, looking out the boxcar door at the seemingly endless sea of tumultuous storm clouds spread out over the sky. "I thought we'd left the storm behind in Iowa."

Kurt shrugs. "I guess it's dreary in Minnesota, too," he says gently. "Maybe it will clear up by the time we reach Kenyon."

* * *

><p>But it doesn't clear up.<p>

When the train rolls into the depot not a half-hour later, the sky is still gray in all directions, and the sun is nowhere in sight. It's an oppressive kind of gloom, so thick that it traps heat in the air between the earth and the sky. Though no rain falls, thunder grumbles overhead at intervals and lightning crackles along the horizon. Santana knows nothing about the science of weather aside from what she's read in books, but she expects a deluge at any moment.

After Brittany returns Blaine's hat and Rory's pipe to their rightful owners, she and Santana join Puck and Sam on the back of a flatbed cart into town. "If it rains, I'll give you my hat, ladybird," Puck offers, casting a wary glance towards the sky.

* * *

><p>It doesn't rain, though.<p>

Still, almost no one from Kenyon turns up for the parade.

The city itself is handsome, with a very wide dirt main street and paved sidewalks. The stores and businesses are made of brown brick, and an electric light hangs above the primary intersection in town, suspended by cables.

Of the small number of people who do turn out to see the circus processional, most of them are day laborers, wearing rolled sleeves and overalls, though there are also a few well-dressed townsfolk, hiding under pretty preemptive parasols, with fine velvet hats and rounded shirt collars. The lot wave at the company members and tip their caps.

With so few people to take in the parade, the company mostly sticks to their wagons; the acrobats don't tumble, the jugglers don't balance their batons, and the clowns don't make mischief. Everyone seems to wait for something that may not even happen.

"It's payday today," Puck remarks as the processional turns a corner, starting down a smaller road in the direction of what will be their campsite.

He's right, of course.

As soon as the parade approaches the white city, Santana can see it—company members hopping down from their vehicles, plodding over to the flatbed cart where both Mr. Adams and Ken wait for them. The scene is somehow stunning, the grass electric green beneath the iridescent gray of the storm. Mr. Adams wears his Kelly green suit, but rather than blending in with the forest at his back and the turf all around him, he stands out as if he were the moving flap on a page from one of the pop-up books Santana so enjoyed as a child.

Seeing Mr. Adams doesn't bring Santana any enjoyment, though.

Either because the last several addresses Mr. Adams made to the company have resulted in her own discomfort or because she still feels twitchy and unsettled following the events of the previous evening, Santana somewhat dreads hearing what Mr. Adams has to say today. She can't recall if Puck told her that it were unusual for Mr. Adams to make a speech to the company before he paid them or not. Somehow, she suspects that it is.

His presence does not bode well.

Santana looks to Brittany for reassurance, but Brittany seems just as wary of the situation as she does. The girls disembark from their cart in silence, allowing Puck and Sam to help them down onto the grass. Wind slithers through their hair and ruffles their skirts. Despite the early hour and the lack of direct sunlight, the earth seethes with heat. Rings of sweat rim Puck and Sam's shirts, and Santana feels just as oppressed by the temperature as the boys look.

By the time Santana, Brittany, Puck, and Sam join the throng, Mr. Adams is already speaking in his lion's roar.

"—the tragedy that befell our friend, Mr. Remington, last night. The Howard County authorities assure me that they'll prosecute the villain responsible to the fullest extent of the law. They now believe that their suspect may have mistaken Mr. Remington's friendliness towards his wife on our midway for something unseemly and other than it was.

Of course, I find it best not to dwell on tragedy.

As I'm sure you're aware, today is Friday, and since it is Friday, it is also payday. As you recall, I spoke to you frankly last week concerning the leanness of our times and the virtue of patience. This week, I ask you to please continue to show restraint and understanding as I—"

A chorus of _boos_ drowns out the rest of the sentence.

"Bad form, Adams!" someone shouts.

Mr. Adams waves his hands for the company to be quiet, and Ken assists him, yelling out "Shut up! Shut up!" until the crowd swallows its complaints.

Says Mr. Adams, "This week I can offer you more notes payable. I can assure you that once Mr. Fabray and I have finalized our arrangements, I'll be able to remit your salaries to you in full. You shan't want for anything. You have me at my word."

"And a lot of good that does us, bub!" someone jeers.

It sounds a lot like the Bearded Lady.

Santana doesn't especially worry about her own unfilled paycheck, but she does fret that Mr. Adams has once again broken a promise to his employees. Some people in the crowd seem outright distraught at the news that they'll have to go another week without pay while others shake their heads, thoroughly discontented. Santana presses closer to Brittany, as jittery as she was when Methuselah refused his handlers earlier in the day.

Puck wipes a hand down his face, exasperated. "Son-of-a-bitch," he curses. He pauses for a second, resigning himself to not having a paycheck, and then says, more placidly, "I'll go collect our notes payable from Kenny, ladybird. You can stick here with Brittany." He sounds distinctly glum.

As Puck, Sam, and most of the other people nearby start to fan out, Santana and Brittany share a look. For as much as Santana doesn't want Quinn Fabray to have to marry Arthur Adams against her will, part of Santana can't help but think that the wedding can't happen soon enough. She finds Brittany's eyes a vivid blue, like the half-light trapped between the clouds and the earth.

"Daddy won't like this too much," Brittany mutters but doesn't say anything more.

Mr. Adams makes his exit from the wagon bay as soon as he finishes giving his speech to the crowd, handing his brown, leather attaché over to Ken before marching off in the direction of the business tent. A queue forms in front of Ken, and Brittany and Santana wait off to the side, unsure whether Puck means to return to them once he's claimed his and Santana's notes payable or not.

Santana has it in her mind to run off to someplace private with Brittany as soon as they're able to, if not to kiss then at least to hold each other for a spell. Her arms all but ache to hold Brittany, though she couldn't explain how if she tried. From the way Brittany keeps touching at Santana's wrist, Santana guesses that Brittany feels the same as she. The girls wait patiently for the crowd around them to dissipate.

* * *

><p>But it doesn't dissipate.<p>

Or at least not entirely.

Even after everyone has collected their notes payable from Ken, the majority of the company still lingers in the wagon bay, standing around in little clusters and speaking to one another in murmuring tones. Puck briefly returns to Santana's side to tell her that he'll take their things to their tent. He kisses her head before departing again. He's one of the only persons to enter the white city proper.

After a minute, Ken barks, "To work with you, you laze-abouts!"

"We'll do the work we've been paid for!" heckles one of the supes.

Ken's face turns a most hideous, blotchy shade of red, like an uncooked sausage hanging in a butcher shop window. He balls his fists and snarls, "I'll have down the names of any man who isn't pulling his load!"

"If you can spell 'em!" comes another taunt.

Many of the people still in the wagon bay laugh at Ken's expense, though many others—including Ma Jones' kitchen girls, Mrs. Schuester's seamstresses, and a handful of supes—begin to move, going toward the white city even as they continue to grumble. Brittany and Santana remain where they are, waiting for someone to call out and claim them for the day, but no one does.

Nerves flitter in Santana's stomach. She feels the same displaced sort of anxiety she did when her father's lawyers brought movers into the bachelor cottage to put everything into crates and take away all the furniture—like she'll be in the wrong place no matter where she stands. It baffles her that so many people would willfully defy Ken's orders and shirk their responsibilities. What will happen when Mr. Adams gets word of this insubordination?

Brittany brushes Santana's elbow, getting Santana's attention. "You okay?" she asks.

"What?" Santana says stupidly.

"You're blinking a lot," Brittany explains. "Would it make you feel better if we got ourselves some work to do? Let's go ask Ma Jones if she would like some help fixing lunch today."

Normally, Santana wouldn't be one to volunteer for chores if given the opportunity to spend the day with Brittany enjoying leisure time otherwise, but at present the idea of having something to do and someplace to be soothes her more than she can say. Brittany always knows just the thing, and Santana loves her for it. Santana slides her hand down Brittany's wrist to link their pinky-fingers together.

"I'd like that, BrittBritt," she says honestly.

Brittany smiles, knowing, and leads Santana off in the direction of the white city.

* * *

><p>Ma Jones assigns Brittany and Santana to assemble sandwiches for lunch and does so with much less fuss than Santana might have expected. She neither chastises Brittany and Santana for coming in late to the mess pit nor praises them for choosing to do work when others have decided to lay off for the day. She sets the girls down in front of a spread of various ingredients, outfits Brittany with a cheese knife and Santana with a paring knife, and cautions them not to put too much mayonnaise on the bread. Her voice sounds somehow quieter than usual.<p>

(Santana couldn't read her, even with a cipher.)

While Ma's kitchen girls chatter on the other side of the mess, Brittany and Santana stick to themselves, speaking quietly to each other. Brittany seems to know that Santana needs to keep her mind busy as well as her hands and so plies Santana with questions about reading to give them something innocuous to talk about.

"So can the letter _A_ can say two sounds or three?" Brittany asks, slicing off some cheese from a brick.

Santana tallies in her head. "Four," she determines.

"Four?" Brittany repeats, thoroughly daunted.

Santana nods. "There's a short one like at the beginning of the word _apple_; a long one like at the beginning of the word _ape_; another short one that sounds like _uh_, like in the word _afraid_; and one where it sounds like _aw_, as in _all_," she explains.

Brittany's eyes widen. "Golly," she says, turning the new information over in her mind. "Apple... ape... afraid... all," she repeats to herself, testing the sounds out on her tongue. "Apple... ape... afraid... all." She looks to Santana. "There are three _A_'s in your name, aren't there? Two apples and one afraid?"

Santana grins, spreading mayonnaise over a halved roll. "Right," she says. "And there's an _A_ in your name, too."

Brittany scrunches up her nose.

(A sweet pang plays through Santana's chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

"What kind of _A_?" Brittany asks. "I don't hear it."

"That's because most people don't pronounce it, I think," Santana says. "But if we said your name phonetically, it would be an apple _A_. Or an afraid _A_. It depends, I guess."

Brittany mulls Santana's reasoning. "What's _phonetically_ mean?" she asks.

It takes Santana a few seconds to reckon how to relate the concept. She spreads more mayonnaise in the meanwhile, and Brittany waits patiently for her to speak. Finally, she says, "When something is spelled phonetically, it means that each letter stands for one sound. There are no silent letters."

Brittany's eyes turn even wider than before. "There can be silent letters?" she asks, staggered.

Santana laughs, "In English, yes."

Brittany slices more cheese. She shakes her head, disapproving. "It might take a really long time for you to teach me to read, Santana," she mumbles.

She sounds embarrassed of herself in the same way that she does whenever she mentions that her work failed to meet Mrs. Schuester's high standards or that no one around the circus trusts her with important things. The reservation in her voice causes Santana's heart to ache.

"Not once we get you a book to read out of," Santana reassures her. "It will all make more sense once you can actually see some letters and words. I mean, you've learned a lot already—very quickly, too. I'm sure if we could get you a primer, you'd pick up all sorts of words in no time. Pretty soon you'll be reading me translations of Dostoyevsky."

"God bless you!" Brittany says, trying to joke Santana's compliment away.

Santana won't let her do it, though. "You'll be reading by the end of the summer," she says seriously, holding Brittany's gaze. "You're a really good student, Britt."

The more Santana talks, the more the doubt melts from Brittany's features, replaced by a warm, soft, adoring look. Brittany glances from Santana's eyes to Santana's mouth and then back again. A small smile curls her lips.

"Santana," she says sweetly, blushing around the ears.

"It's true," Santana shrugs. "Plus, I bet if you were learning to read in Spanish—where the spellings all make sense and there are hardly any silent letters—you'd have everything down already."

Brittany reaches across the table, twining her fingers with Santana's. "Maybe you can teach me that next," she says, only mostly joking.

(She always gives Santana the most thoughtful gifts.)

* * *

><p>Clouds continue to churn with thunder and occasionally flash with lightning overhead as the girls spend the next hour-and-a-half assembling nearly four-dozen sandwiches, working efficiently as they converse. The atmosphere crackles, energized, dark, and kinetic, causing the Minnesota grasslands to come alive, rippling and flittering with changes in the air.<p>

Eventually, Shane Tinsley and Matt arrive on scene to turn down the blue tarp over the mess pit in case of rain. Ma Jones thanks the supes for their help but won't meet Shane's eyes as she wishes him goodbye upon completion of his chore.

As the supes tromp back toward the white city, Ma comes over to the table where Brittany and Santana work. She shakes her head, clearing cobwebs, and seems uneasy about something.

"Santana," she says, resting one hand on the table, staring down at the slats between the boards as if they were points on a map and she a spy planning how to infiltrate some new country, "Mr. Adams ordered some special groceries for tomorrow. He's having oysters and crawdads and fresh plums for cake brought in on the morning train. They'll be delivered to the store in town. I have to go to pick them up after breakfast, and it'd be right handy if you could come with me. You could invite Miss Brittany to come with us, too, and then we won't even have to ask Mrs. Schuester along."

Ma won't look at Santana until after she says her piece, and when she finally does look, she wears the same tentative, imploring expression that she did when asking Santana permission to sit nearby while checking over the potatoes. There's a pout at her lip and a depth to her eyes, like the shaft of a well. Santana still isn't accustomed to Ma Jones approaching her in an attitude of supplication, and it strains her heart to think that Ma would be afraid to ask her for such a simple favor. It also occurs to her for the first time that Ma seems much more comfortable talking to her than to Brittany.

(Santana supposes that rules are rules are rules.)

(Ma leaves it to Santana to request that Brittany join them.)

Had anyone else asked Santana whether or not she would want to relinquish her free time on a down day, Santana would have rolled her eyes at the person and said of course she wouldn't.

But this is Ma Jones, whom Santana feels keen to please.

Even though Santana would like to spend her entire Saturday alone with Brittany, hidden away in some far corner of the camp, she's willing to give up at least a few hours to help Ma, as needs be. After all, Santana had wanted to be Ma's friend for the longest time, and now she is, and now Ma has sought out her assistance specifically. Ma could have asked any one or more of her own kitchen girls to attend her at the store, but she didn't.

It strikes Santana that there must be some reason why.

Santana flashes Brittany a questioning look, asking without speaking if Brittany would consent to going into town with Ma tomorrow. Brittany nods that she would. Santana smiles at Ma, kindly.

"We can come with you, sure," she offers, trying to make it no great thing.

Santana fully expects that her answer will relieve or even gladden Ma, so it surprises her to see Ma actually turn even more skittish for her word. Ma picks at a spot on the table with her fingernail and glances between Santana and Brittany, as if she can't stand to look at the pair of them for too long all at once.

"If y'all are handy afterwards," she says in a very small voice, "I could probably use some extra help around the mess, too. There'll be heaps of food to make and flowers to cut. I suppose y'all could probably tend with the other gals during the evening, too, if y'all wanted to."

It takes Santana several seconds to realize what Ma has asked of her.

(Santana had never supposed that she would be anyone's bridesmaid.)

Ma frames her request so that it's not even a question—more of a suggestion that Santana and Brittany can either take or ignore. There's a hesitancy in her that seems so very familiar to Santana. Is Ma also a person who can't bring herself to hope for good things for fear that she won't ever have them? Ma picks at the same spot on the table, like she can't precisely tease it out.

Santana's heart squeezes in her chest. Part of her wonders what it means that Ma Jones, who's been at the circus for so many years, would choose a girl she barely knows to join her bridal party, but another part of her thinks she understands. After not having any friends for most of her life, Santana has learned how very easy it is to grow deeply attached to certain persons over the course of just a few days.

Though she could scarcely explain as much aloud, Santana understands friendship as a sort of continual hope that good things—the selfsame good things in which she has so much trouble believing otherwise, in fact—will happen for the people she holds dearest to her.

The more she learns about the youths of the circus—not just their details, like where they were born or when they joined the company, but their little things, like what makes them laugh or what they secretly wish for when they think that no one else is looking—the more impossible it becomes for Santana to not wish well for them.

(Maybe that's what affectionate love is, after all—to learn to adore counting the infinitesimal parts and pieces that make up the great whole.)

Two weeks ago, Santana never could have imagined that a girl like Brittany existed in the world and much less that she herself could fall in love with a girl like Brittany so shortly after meeting her, and yet that's exactly what happened. Two weeks ago, Santana never could have imagined that she'd have friends in persons as diverse as Sam Evans and Rachel Berry and Ma Jones, and yet that's exactly what happened, too.

Now Santana can scarcely imagine what it might be like to go without Brittany and their friends.

Santana feels so very fond of all of them.

Though it pains Santana to think that Ma will have to marry Shane Tinsley though Ma loves Sam Evans instead, Santana wouldn't want to leave Ma alone on such an important day—not when Ma seems to want her and Brittany about.

Not when Ma seems to need her friends.

Santana checks again with Brittany before speaking on behalf of both of them. "Of course," she replies, reaching down to set her hand upon Ma Jones' hand on the table, her red thread ring resting over Ma Jones' tin one. She finds the quick of Ma's pretty, dark eyes. "We'd love to," she says softly.

(She couldn't speak truer words if she tried.)

* * *

><p>It would seem that only about half of the circus company does any work before the bell rings, and yet everyone still turns up for lunch, with some people arriving at the mess pit even before they are summoned there, taking shelter under the blue tarp and claiming places at the table in anticipation of rain.<p>

Nothing much has changed about the weather since the circus arrived in Kenyon. Storm clouds still contort overhead, sensuous and thick. Lightning lingers along the horizon. The grasses shiver despite the warmth of the wind. It's a hot day, never mind the gloom, with summer heat stagnant between the earth and heavens.

Though the atmosphere feels charged for something, as of yet, nothing happens.

Not a single raindrop falls.

Whereas Puck has spent the last few days running off to town between shows, today he arrives for lunch at the same time as Sam, Finn, Rory, Kurt, and Blaine do, apparently having spent the morning working on some project with them.

"Who knew Little Hummel could replace a split axle so quick?" he says, patting Kurt hard on the back.

Kurt coughs at the strong contact but seems pleased with Puck's compliment. He blushes and smiles, feline. _"De rien, de rien,"_ he says.

Puck opens his mouth again, perhaps to make further comment concerning Kurt's skill, but stops dead when he spots Santana standing just a few feet in front of him. Suddenly, he becomes sheepish.

"Howdy, ladybird," he says, taking off his hat in greeting.

He flushes, even though there's nothing to flush about.

Santana can't figure out why Puck seems so abashed to stand in her presence. She can only suppose that Puck must have been about to say something vulgar to Kurt or that Puck had already done so as they entered the mess pit. He probably didn't want Santana to overhear whatever it was. As it is, he won't look at any one part of Santana's face; his twitchiness makes her nervous.

She waves to Puck but doesn't speak to him.

She presses closer to Brittany.

With so many people already seated at the dining table, the circus youths claim a long spot of ground for themselves and eat flopped over on their sides, their plates laid out in front of them.

Though Santana would expect Puck to want to sit close to her, he doesn't. Instead, he makes a point to situate himself between Finn and Sam on the far end of the group, his back turned to Santana.

Santana can't help but wonder if Puck doesn't still feel a bit guilty about his and Finn's conversation in the wagon bay this morning or if it might have hurt his feelings when Finn teased him on the train about Santana being Brittany's good luck charm but not his.

Though Puck tosses a few glances Santana's way throughout the meal, checking on her in the same way that a man afraid of missing an appointment might check the time on a clock, he doesn't make any effort to beckon her over to where he sits.

(Of all the people Santana calls "friend" at the circus, Puck is the one she understands least of all.)

With Puck far away and no one else paying much attention to them, Santana and Brittany are free to talk at their leisure. Santana finicks at her sandwich, losing herself for a moment in the way Brittany's pretty mouth lifts when Brittany smiles. Her hankering to hold and kiss Brittany hasn't gone away since morning.

"Britt," she says softly, so that none of the boys overhear them, "I'm sorry we'll have to do chores all day tomorrow. I just thought we should probably pitch in, since Ma asked." She offers Brittany a pout. "I didn't mean to give up all our free time."

"That's okay," Brittany assures her. "I didn't think we'd be able to get out of working tomorrow anyway, not with so much going on. We're just lucky Mrs. Schuester didn't find us first. I heard some of Ma's kitchen girls talking, and they said Mrs. Schuester is making a fabric backdrop for the couples to say their vows in front of tomorrow. If we listen really closely, we could probably hear her hollering about it right now."

"You mean she's not taking lunch?" Santana asks, quickly scanning the mess pit to see if she can spy Mrs. Schuester anywhere. When she can't, she puts on an expression of mock concern. "It's that bad, is it?"

"It's the worst," says Brittany, pretty mouth lifting into her cat-smile. She pauses for a second, biting her lip, and then ducks forward, speaking close to Santana's ear and in a very quiet voice. "During the dance tomorrow night, let's run away together, just you and me. We can go off into the woods or find someplace to hide out."

Excitement sparks in Santana's belly and her breath hitches, something inside her catching for Brittany's sudden proximity to her. "There'll be a dance tomorrow?" she asks stupidly.

Brittany smiles against the shell of Santana's ear. "Sure thing," she whispers. "It'll be a down day and a wedding. There's got to be a dance after a wedding." Then, breathless, "Santana, will you dance with me before we slip off?"

Santana matches Brittany's whisper and Brittany's expression. She puts her own face closer to Brittany's ear. Her grin grows wider with each new word she speaks. "I'd love to," she says, "and I love—"

"It's rude to whisper in a crowd," Rachel Berry announces, appearing above Brittany and Santana with a plate of food in her hands. She sits down beside them on the grass, despite not having received an invitation to do so.

The fact that Santana refrains from groaning aloud is a tribute to her and Rachel's budding friendship.

* * *

><p>Rachel prattles all through lunch about how she might like to change her aria for the Little Malibran sketch midseason in order to keep her performance "at its most avant-garde and relevant."<p>

She claims to feel very conflicted as to whether she ought to choose part of an Italian opera or part of a German opera for her replacement solo, opining that Italian operas are more artistic than other operas on the whole but suspecting that the Scandinavian population of the Midwestern route might more appreciate a selection "in homage to their heritage."

Though Santana makes certain to nod at appropriate intervals, she also plays a game with Brittany wherein she and Brittany take turns making increasingly silly faces at each other whenever Rachel turns away from one or the other of them.

"Santana, have you even heard a word I've said?" Rachel grouses when she catches Santana crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at Brittany about midway through a very detailed explanation of Wagner's genius.

Santana smirks. "Aren't you the Little Malibran of Seville?" she asks Rachel teasingly. When Rachel stammers, she rolls her eyes. "Okay, so if you want to be authentic, you should sing something from Barbieri."

When Rachel acts surprised that Santana would know such an obscure composer, Santana can't help herself. She flashes Brittany a wicked smile, clears her throat, and puts on her silliest, most overly-flourished operatic singing voice, mimicking an old song her father used to play for her on the gramophone in the parlor. She clasps her hands together as if she were a prima donna at the Met.

_Niñas que a vender flores vais a Granada,  
><em>_no paséis por la sierra de la Alpujarra  
><em>_Hay un bandido que  
><em>_con todas las niñas  
><em>_tiene partido—_

Santana can only manage to maintain her silly singing for half the verse—mainly because Brittany looks at her so imploringly, wanting her to really sing like she did yesterday in the tent. Unable to deny Brittany anything, Santana switches to her true singing voice as soon as the bandit enters the song, allowing the last note to ring out, pure.

The song isn't an aria, and it doesn't even contain solo parts, but Santana doesn't especially care. After she finishes her performance, Brittany looks at her as if she were made of gold, and Rachel's mouth falls open so widely that someone could drive a stagecoach down her throat just as easily as if it were a tunnel.

Santana considers both expressions marks of her victory. She laughs, pleased with herself. "I could always teach you the Spanish, if you like," she offers, giving Rachel a stout pat on the kneecap.

She and Rachel must truly be friends now because, after a beat, Rachel laughs, too.

* * *

><p>Only a short while later, thunder clears its throat overhead, and the circus youths rise, bussing their cleaned plates to the tubs at the back of the chuck. Everyone looks to the sky, searching it for rain.<p>

Still nothing.

Just waiting.

For the last little while, Santana had been able to forget the guilt in the pit of her belly in favor of merrymaking with Brittany, but now that she and Brittany have once more to part from each other before the show, she feels the guilt starting to sink low in her again.

She doesn't want to have to read tarot on the midway. She can't abide causing another death, not when she's drawn that loathsome card for two persons already in the week. She pulls away from the rest of the group, stopping to catch her breath just beyond the trisection of tents where she and Brittany first met.

Brittany walks only a pace behind her. She comes right up to Santana, taking Santana by the hand and fixing her with a serious look.

"Not too many people will turn up for the fair today," Brittany says consolingly, a promise in her voice. "And the ones who do will get caught up in the acts at the front of the midway, I'm sure." She pauses for a second, biting her lip, before carrying on at a lilt, "I hear that there's this human not-a-target who's going to put on a show like they've never seen just at the start of the pitch. She might have stolen some sandwich ingredients from the mess pit just now."

When Santana scrunches up her brow, both surprised and confused by what Brittany has told her, Brittany flashes Santana her mischief-making smile.

"Maybe she's going to have her daddy throw knives through two halves of a roll with meat and cheese in-between them to make a sandwich on the backboard," she says, shrugging as if it's no big thing. She becomes increasingly teasing and droll as Santana starts to match her smile. "I'll bet he can do it, and I'll bet that the gillies from Kenyon would much rather see that act than have their fortunes read to them on a day like today."

(If anyone claims to have loved someone more than Santana Lopez loves Brittany Pierce at this instant, Santana would never believe them, not even if they swore it by every power in the universe.)

Santana means to thank Brittany and to tell Brittany how brilliant she is, but what comes out of her mouth instead is mostly a squeak: "You would do that for me?"

Brittany brushes over Santana's wrist with her thumb. She smiles like Santana's just asked her the kind of question that doesn't even warrant asking. "I'd do anything for you," she says, just so. "I'd steal a thousand sandwiches, if it would help you at all."

Santana smiles, dimples deep in her cheeks. "Brittany, that is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me," she peeps, her voice sweet and high, like it only ever is on Brittany's account.

Brittany laughs. "Well," she says, shrugging, unable to explain anything more than that.

For a few seconds, the girls smile at each other, dopey and adoring. If they didn't have to hurry onto the midway for the fair, Santana would probably drag Brittany behind the nearest tent and kiss her breathless.

The fair.

"Britt," Santana says suddenly, starting to lead Brittany out from the trisection of tents again. She looks left and right, checking both ways, before guiding Brittany back out into the main corridor between the tent rows, "how come I never knew you had an act during the fair before?"

"What?" Brittany asks.

"I never knew you and your daddy had an act on the midway," Santana admits. "I've never seen you out there."

"Really?" Brittany says, scrunching up her nose.

(A sweet pang plays through Santana's chest, like a high, clear note on a piano.)

"Really," Santana affirms.

Brittany smiles at her, like she somehow finds it precious that Santana hadn't known about her act. "That's probably because we only work the midway on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday," she muses, swinging her and Santana's linked hands, continuing to walk along, "and our act only lasts for the first half of the fair. I don't even stand in front of the target for it. I just throw apples and handkerchiefs and rope into the air and Daddy aims for that stuff. It riles up the crowd pretty well. Afterwards, we have to go get ready for the show—sharpen up the knives again, you know?"

She stops at the place where she and Santana must part ways, still holding Santana's hand in hers for just a second longer. She bites her lip, just looking Santana over as if she can't ever see Santana enough.

Now Santana is the one to blush, hot under Brittany's close attention.

"That sounds like a fun knife throwing act," Santana stammers, still tripped up on how wonderfully kind Brittany is and how thoughtful and clever, too.

"It is fun," Brittany says in a way that means _We should maybe practice it sometime_.

"Okay."

"Okay."

Both girls breathe in, giggly and breathless. Santana doesn't know how it's possible for one person to go from feeling so anxious to so cheerful so quickly—it's all Brittany's doing, though, of course.

For as thoughtful as it was for Puck to offer to speak to Mr. Adams on Santana's behalf, the truth is that Puck doesn't understand why Santana so hates reading tarot to begin with. Though he'll help Santana not have to read tarot in the future, he supposes that she'll just have to get by if she has to read it today. Brittany understands why Santana hates reading tarot, though. And Brittany knows that it's important for Santana not to have to read tarot today, just like it's important for her not to have to read it any time ever.

(It's Brittany Santana trusts to take care of her.)

* * *

><p>Brittany is right: very few people from Kenyon turn up for the morning fair. Only a handful of schoolboys and some old folks with bumbershoots dare to brave the outdoors under such imminent threat of rain. No one even bothers to form a queue outside Santana's booth, and, after a while, Ken even gives up on standing watch over Santana's act, wandering away and grumbling to himself about having "more things to do than Lucifer but half the devils to do 'em with."<p>

Santana strains her ears listening for sounds of laughter or shocked gasps coming from the fore of the pitch, but she hears nothing but the low complaint of thunder muttering overhead. Still, it still brings a smile to her face to imagine Brittany offering up sandwich ingredients to her father for a target. She can only imagine Mr. Pierce's confusion and Brittany's insistence. How did Brittany even get the sandwich stuff to the midway? Did she put it in her satchel?

A familiar crushed-gravel voice cuts through Santana's thoughts.

"You're giving readings today?"

It's barely even a question.

It's Quinn Fabray.

* * *

><p>Quinn wears a beautiful snarl, eyes bright with the same vivid green that carpets the Midwestern countryside beneath its thunderstorm shroud, features sharp with the same wicked loveliness of a knife blade, beveled and ready for the cut. Quinn bears her teeth and breathes like a combative animal, fixing Santana with a glare.<p>

"I want a reading," she says, hard and raw.

Two weeks ago, if a mad rich girl had ordered Santana to give a reading, Santana would have obliged her immediately, without question or complaint.

Not now, though.

Not when Santana and Quinn are alone, and Santana can set her own terms for their exchange without Ken hovering over her shoulder for once.

Santana meets Quinn's eyes. "I won't read cards for you," she says. "It's palm or nothing."

Though she doesn't don her grandmother's accent, Santana sounds so much like her grandmother—so firm and sure—that for a moment she doesn't know herself. Gone is the girl who cowers before the rules. In her place, there's a protector, someone who won't allow Quinn Fabray to ask for something that could harm her.

What Santana says isn't open for debate.

She refuses to flinch or to look away from Quinn.

Quinn isn't accustomed to people like Santana refusing her things. She glares at Santana for a second longer before finally submitting. "Fine," she says, taking her place in the chair in front of Santana's table, repositioning her skirts around herself with such vigor that an onlooker would think they had offended her.

When she extends her hand to Santana, she does so with quick, agitated movements. She isn't angry at Santana, though. The object of her anger is somewhere far away—and it's something bigger than Santana, bigger than the circus.

Now that she's sitting level with Santana, Quinn breaks their eye contact, as if she can't stand to hold Santana's gaze; she glances off to the side as if there is something terrible at Santana's back that she doesn't want to see. She blinks and blinks and blinks again, despite the gloom of the day, eyelashes pale and pretty upon her cheeks.

More than ever, Quinn looks like the heroine from a Russian novel, a second off from throwing herself beneath the undercarriage of a passing train or being sent away in exile onto the ceaseless Siberian steppe.

It occurs to Santana that on the first day she met Quinn, Quinn scoffed at her act, calling it black magic and hocus pocus. How curious, then, that Quinn should demand a reading from Santana now—and so insistently, too.

Santana takes Quinn hand in her own hands. She doesn't wait for Quinn to look back at her before asking, "Why do you want a reading? You don't believe in them anyway."

Her voice is much softer and quieter than before, all of the firmness gone from it now that she no longer has the need to fight against something.

Though Quinn wets her lips and swallows, she still sounds hoarse when she speaks.

"I need—," she starts, throat snagging. She finally looks at Santana directly for the first time since sitting down at the table. Her eyes shine, but no tears fall to her face just yet. "I need you to tell me that I can be happy," she says. "I need you to tell me that it will be all right, that—that—"

Her voice breaks with a silent sob, and she curls in upon herself, resting her brow against her forearm, covering her face with her free hand. Her shoulders wrack, and she breathes in gasps, like something has stabbed into her and she can't manage to take in enough air around it.

It's an awkward motion, for Santana still holds Quinn's hand in her own, and the girls sit close to each other, with only a tabletop between them. All the same, it wouldn't be right for Santana to let go of Quinn, and so Santana stays fast, remaining in her place, thumbs pinned over the creases in Quinn's palm.

To an outside observer, it would look like Quinn were a penitent and Santana the priest offering her communion.

"Please," Quinn pleads, sitting up and looking into Santana's eyes again. "Please tell me I'll be able to live with myself. Tell me I can learn to love him. Lie to me."

It should be an easy request to fill.

(What is the circus but a city built of colors and lies?)

The truth is that Santana Lopez hardly even knows Quinn Fabray.

They've bumbled into each other a half-dozen times around the circus. Santana's offended Quinn and stolen Quinn's book and not known how to act when she found Quinn sobbing under the billboard partition. Really, Quinn is mostly a stranger to her.

So who is Santana Lopez to say that Quinn Fabray couldn't learn to love Arthur Adams and live happily as his little wife?

Santana smoothes over the creases in Quinn's palm, the heart and lifelines, which for all Santana has learned at the circus are still as foreign and meaningless to her understanding as if they were hieroglyphs carved out in stone in a dead language. Santana steels herself and summons up the wherewithal to tell Quinn Fabray what she wants—no, needs—to hear. The words all but tumble out of her mouth.

"I can't."

Santana might have slapped Quinn and hurt her less.

Quinn's jaw drops, and she wrenches back, attempting to snatch her hand away from Santana. Without meaning to do it, Santana clamps down, holding Quinn fast. Quinn gasps but hardly seems to take in any air.

"I'm so sorry," Santana says meeting Quinn's eyes at the same time that she runs against upon that invisible wall inside of herself. "I just can't."

How many lies has Santana told since leaving New York? She lied about marrying Puck. She lied about being an Italian gypsy. She lied to strangers as she read their palms. She lied about losing her cards, about having chores to do, about not feeling well. She's even lied in a roundabout way, by omission, by allowing Puck to think that she hasn't given her heart to anyone, when really she has given it to Brittany a thousand times over on each new day that they spend together in the white city.

When Santana first arrived at the circus, Puck told her the truth didn't matter anymore, but Santana knows now that he was wrong.

It matters more than anything.

Santana has learned what the truth means from blue eyes and warm hands, from the press of naked bodies and the vibrancy of laughter against the shell of her ear. She's learned it each time Brittany has whispered "Can I tell you a secret?" and then shown Santana some special new part of herself. She's learned it as Brittany's held onto her every hope and care so watchfully and delicately, like whatever Santana chooses to give her is the most sacred thing in the world.

She's learned it in other ways, when the youths of the circus have made it plain to her how much everyone wants for something and how very human it is to yearn for some great thing beyond the self—a compassionate understanding that connects individual to whole.

When Santana gave herself over to a life lived in lies, she was a lonely little girl in an emptied-out bachelor cottage, convinced she would never find anything better than the deception offered to her, but over the last two weeks, she's discovered that there are so many more wonderful, more perfect things.

Maybe circus magic in itself is neither fair nor foul.

Maybe sometimes it's all right to allow people to see only what they wish to.

But lying about important things, like happiness and love, is entirely something different.

When people lie about love, Sam Evans has his heart broken, and Ma Jones makes an engagement to a man who doesn't make her sing. Puck ends up looking like a fool, and Santana and Brittany must sneak about and hide whatever brings them joy. Santana's father never marries Santana's angel mother. So many people spend their lives lonely.

Santana knows it's different with Quinn—that Quinn isn't in love with someone other than Arthur Adams and that Arthur Adams most likely isn't even in love with Quinn himself. Even so, anything that a person loves with her whole heart, whether it's Brittany Pierce or writing newspaper articles, means the world and deserves the truth.

It matters more than anything.

Though Quinn would pull away from her, Santana latches onto Quinn's hand. "I can't lie about that. Not to you," she says, unable to explain anything more before Quinn wrenches away from her.

She expects to see more of the scathing anger with which Quinn faces the world hot behind Quinn's eyes, but she doesn't. Instead, not for the first time since they've met, Quinn looks at Santana like she's seeing her anew—like there's something in Santana she hadn't expected to find. Quinn breathes her heavy, trapped-animal breaths and stares at Santana for what seems like a long while.

Another silent sob breaks in Quinn's throat.

A first tear traces down Quinn's cheek.

Then, all at once, Quinn Fabray is gone.

* * *

><p>No one else turns up to Santana's booth during the fair, and so Santana sits for many minutes, listening to the distant peal of thunder. The earth blooms, jungle-thick and verdant all around her. She wonders if it will ever rain in Kenyon.<p>

(She wonders if she just did a bad thing.)

When the show bell rings, she gathers up her belongings quietly and quickly, folding over her peacock-colored tablecloth and burying her cards and tambourine inside it. She fixes her sashes and readjusts her bangles. Even though Quinn went away from her booth crying, Santana feels almost the same today as she did yesterday after reading tarot for the old woman.

Blank inside.

Untempered.

When she turns up in the backstage area, it surprises her to find the place very sparsely populated. Some of the clowns are missing, as is the entirety of the Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie. Mrs. Schuester and her seamstresses are also nowhere on scene. In fact, no one is dispensing flowers or veils, as they ought to be. Santana's shock must show on her face because Puck immediately flanks her, as if to preempt her saying anything aloud concerning the situation.

"We've scrapped the knight sketch for today, ladybird," he tells her in a low whisper. "We're just gonna do the opening parade, like we did before. You still remember the steps?"

"Sure," Santana says, floored that so many people would willfully skip out on the show. "Won't Ken have everyone who's skiving red-lighted?"

"That's the scuttle," Puck says darkly. "I think they figure Mr. Adams can't afford to fire all of 'em. I'll be damned if he don't make a few examples of these jackasses, though. We're just lucky the audience is smaller than usual today. I poked my head in the tent, and less than half of the rows are filled. You could hear an echo in there."

For Puck's word, the same uneasiness that Santana felt in the wagon bay this morning flitters in her belly again. She doesn't like the idea of so many people making trouble for Mr. Adams and themselves. Will the missing company members really lose their jobs for holding out?

Santana makes a quick scan of the backstage to see which of her acquaintances—if any—are unaccounted for. "Rory isn't here," she whispers.

"He sure ain't," Puck says even more darkly than before.

Thunder rumbles overhead and the final show bell rings.

* * *

><p>With so many performers not present, the matinee runs strangely, discombobulated and much shorter in duration than usual. Everything takes place in one ring as opposed to spread out over three. Everyone seems in a flap, unsure of when to enter the big top and when to exit it.<p>

Though some of the absentee clowns, including Rory, do eventually turn up in time for the baseball sketch, the Equestrienne Coterie never makes an appearance, and Will skips over their act in the show entirely, as if it had never existed.

Kurt is one of only two jugglers to take the stage following the lion taming act, and the Flying Dragon Changs fill in for some of the missing contortionists thereafter, turning somersaults and bending their bodies into fantastic shapes on the ground, somehow seeming much stranger than they do suspended midair on strings.

Just like yesterday, Will remains listless and uninspiring as he narrates the show. He barely bothers to chase after the clowns when they steal his hat, and he couldn't seem less surprised when Rachel lingers on stage following the gypsy act for her Little Malibran shtick. Even from far away, Santana can see that he isn't shaven and that his eyes look tired, ringed with reds and violets. His tone is flat, his antics worn-out.

It's difficult to believe that he purveys "the most magnificent spectacle between this nation's two fair oceans" when he seems so unenthused about the whole affair himself.

Perhaps thankfully, perhaps not, Puck was right when he said that the audience was smaller than usual today. Hardly anyone sits up in the cheap seats, and only a very few persons occupy the first few rows on the bleachers otherwise. It's impossible for Santana to tell, but it seems as if the people closest to the rings look decidedly unamused.

It isn't difficult to guess why.

Throughout the whole show, Santana feels jumpy and slightly dizzy, like she can't keep up with what's going on. Following the gypsy act, she perches herself at the back of the tent, restless and waiting for Mr. Pierce and Brittany to take the stage after Rachel.

Stevie Evans appears at her side. "It isn't a good circus day," he observes, watching as Rachel holds her note, waiting for her goblet to break.

When Santana flinches, Sam takes note from across the way.

"Stevie!" he calls. "Don't you bother Ms. Santana!"

Stevie turns away at Sam's beck.

"He's not bothering me—," Santana starts to say, but then Rachel's glass shatters, and the crowd applauds.

Santana's heart jumps in her chest.

She forgets what's happening behind her as Will announces the knife throwing act and the Pierces appear from the darkness of the wings.

Mr. Pierce still walks with his limp and wears even a heavier scowl than usual, if possible. At first, Santana thinks he might be in a foul mood because he missed out on another paycheck this week or because so many company members have shirked their responsibilities and made for a bad show, but then she sees him wince against the electric lights as if they burn his eyes.

He has a headache.

(Stone guilt sinks low in Santana's belly, all the way to the bottom.)

Though Brittany had been joking and upbeat with Santana when they parted ways after lunch, she seems to realize the severity of the situation now. Unlike yesterday, Brittany doesn't play tricks in the ring or take extra time to charm the audience. She performs her duties quickly and without flourish, arranging the satchel at its place on the ground and taking her mark before the board, at military attention in her pose.

She straightens up immediately and fixes her father with an entreating look.

"Oh God," Santana says, covering her hand with her mouth.

"Ms. Santana, are you all right?"

The voice startles Santana almost as much as the goings-on in the ring do. She turns to find Sam and Stevie standing just behind her, peeking into the big top through the aperture in the tent canvas from over her shoulder. Sam's hand hovers just over her back, reaching out to touch her in comfort.

"May I?" he asks, taking special care to ask Santana's permission with Stevie watching.

Santana nods absently. "Sure," she says.

Sam sets his hand on Santana's back, holding her in place. His touch is warm and stabilizing.

"May I?" Stevie asks, opening up his arms.

"Sure," Santana says again, and Stevie throws himself around her waist, hugging in close to her. He's tall enough that his head nearly reaches Santana's collarbone, but short enough that he can fit comfortably at the curve in her side. He rests his face against her, settling into stillness.

With the brothers Evans standing watch around her, Santana turns her attention back to the big top just in time to see Mr. Pierce take his paces at Will's instruction. Though Mr. Pierce's injury is now three days old, he still limps along as if it were fresh, cringing each time he sets even the slightest weight on the pad of his foot. When he finally reaches his appointed place, he requires several seconds to recover, breathing heavily and sucking in whistling breaths through his teeth.

Santana stiffens, and Stevie holds her tighter.

Then.

Mr. Pierce throws, stumbling forward with the lob. His knife doesn't make its full rotation, not before it reaches the board, not before—

Santana closes her eyes.

She hears the thud before she sees the knife skitter across the dirt at Brittany's feet, nowhere near where it ought to have landed. It comes to a halt near the center of the ring.

"It bounced off," Sam says, thumbing at Santana's back. "Britt's all right."

Brittany is all right, but Santana doesn't know for how much longer she will be. Even with all of Mr. Pierce's botched throws to date, Santana has never seen him fail to rotate a knife all the way before, and neither has she seen him fail to land a knife in the target. His last miss may have been his worst one yet, and it was only his first throw for the act.

"Come on, Britt," Santana pleads, wrapping her arms around Stevie and holding him to her.

Mr. Pierce's second throw hits home but lands far to the left of its intended destination. Mr. Pierce winces on the release and winces again when the blade embeds in the board. He draws a hand to his face, wiping it, and Santana shudders.

(He isn't supposed to break eye contact with Brittany, not until the first round of the act is over.)

Throws three, four, five, and six land, but none of them are particularly accurate or beautiful. While the audience doesn't boo Mr. Pierce, they certainly don't cheer him, either. He wipes his face again, covering his eyes with his palm and hiding from the light.

When Brittany scurries over to procure the apple from the satchel, Stevie whisper-hollers at her through the shadows.

"Brittany! Brittany! Are you okay?"

"Stevie, don't interrupt her," Sam warns.

His caution is unnecessary; if Brittany hears Stevie, she doesn't lift her head to the sound of his voice. She moves efficiently and without pause, gathering up her supplies and resuming her place before the target for the second leg of the act.

When Brittany and Mr. Pierce resume their eye contact, Santana can't help but notice the way Mr. Pierce twitches, like he can't keep from blinking or as if he has dust caught under his eyelid. It takes him several seconds to steady himself and regain control of his face. He wears a painfully hard expression, like all the clay in him had dried out and turned to stone.

Brittany nods her head and raises her hand.

Santana flinches before Mr. Pierce even moves.

He throws.

The knife hits the edge of the board with the flat of its blade. There's the fast, glancing ting of steel ricocheting from wood. The knife spins off to the side, landing ten feet from the front of the ring. Santana's stomach seizes, knotting. She flinches and so does Stevie. The audience lets out first a collective gasp and then a murmur.

"No worries, folks!" Will reassures them, as if he has any authority to say so or power to control the outcome of the act.

If Santana weren't so worried for Brittany, she'd bristle.

Mr. Pierce regains his balance. He breathes heavily, as if he had just run for a long distance under the hot sun. Thunder cracks above the big top, loud enough that the audience rustles in their seats, unnerved. Sam presses even closer to Santana, breathing near to the top of her head. Stevie looks up at Santana, but she won't look away from the ring herself.

She can't.

Mr. Pierce heaves his next throw. From the instant the knife leaves his hand, Santana knows it's a bad one. She can tell, with horrible dread stillness in her belly, that this is it—that this is the throw that will finally hit Brittany.

The queer thing is that Santana can't scream, and, unlike all the other times, she can't close her eyes. She can only watch as the knife moves down, not up—as it carves a straight descent through the air, heavy and without rotation. Her gaze can't even outpace the blade. She can't look ahead to see if Brittany will manage to move out of the way. She can only see that Mr. Pierce has misaimed, awfully and entirely.

A metallic glint drives deep into angel white.

The audience screams.

Santana's knees give out from under her.

For a split instant, she can't see or hear anything; something sinks in the back of her mind, and she feels the sick displacement of freefall. But then arms catch her up, one pair strong, the other small. She doesn't hit the ground. Sam and Stevie hold her, but she can barely even fathom them. She's boneless, brainless, her heart out in the ring.

Immediately, Santana searches for Brittany and finds her crouched in the strangest, contorted position, one knee on the ground, her other leg skewed in a weird, uneven twist. She's still upright, but just barely. She reaches across herself, holds the edge of the board with one hand. Hard light haloes her in vivid white.

Santana searches for red.

Sound and breath and knowingness return to Santana all at once, in a rush, as if she had just emerged from being underwater.

"She's all right! She's all right," Sam's babbling in her ear. "Britt's all right! He didn't hit her! She's all right!"

He sounds almost hysterical with relief, if such a thing were possible. He holds Santana under her arms but starts to lower her to the ground, sinking down at her back so that they both collapse in a heap. Stevie holds Santana at the waist and goes along with them. The little boy doesn't speak but searches Santana's face with wide, worried eyes.

Santana won't look away from the ring.

She can't.

She can only watch Brittany.

The knife protrudes from between Brittany's legs, cut clean through Brittany's skirt, pinning Brittany to the backboard. It didn't hit any part of Brittany's body, though. She must have moved her legs out of the way at the last second. She must have dodged.

Santana's pulse thunders so loudly in her ears that it drowns out the sounds of the storm overhead, and she almost feels sick for it.

She's relieved and exhausted, heartsick and belatedly terrified, sad and dizzy, nauseous and winded, exuberantly happy and in love, all at once. A sob breaks her throat just as she sits down on the ground, her skirts fanned out around her, Stevie Evans all but in her lap, and Sam Evans at her back. She knows she shouldn't cry because everything turned out all right—because Mr. Pierce didn't hit Brittany after all—but she can't maintain composure.

She hates it that Brittany's blind father has been lobbing knives at Brittany's head for years. She and Brittany should have practiced the act yesterday instead of hiding out in her tent. She shouldn't have been so selfish as to keep Brittany from doing something that would save Brittany's life. They have to master their act so that they can show it to Mr. Adams and Brittany can live. They have to take over the knife throwing act so that Brittany can throw and Santana can stand in her old dangerous place.

Santana covers her mouth with her palm to muffle the sound, a deep pain in her chest that robs all her breath away. She doesn't know what she would have done if something had happened. She feels so stupid and so helpless; Sam will probably scold her.

He doesn't, though.

"It's all right, Santana," he says, moving his arms so that he embraces her from behind. "It's all right."

Stevie says, "You don't have to cry. Brittany's okay," and gives Santana a pat on the knee.

He's right, Santana knows.

But.

Santana watches as Will and Mr. Pierce hurry over to where Brittany stands. Mr. Pierce yanks the knife's hilt from the board with a grizzly strength, pulling Brittany into his arms, and Will turns to address the crowd, assuring them that "Miss Brittany has made it safely through."

Even from so far away, Santana can see that Brittany's shaking. There's a deep rip through her skirts and a tremor in her hands. If something worse had happened—

(Santana can't breathe.)

* * *

><p>Santana cries only with her breath and not with tears. Though her eyes shine, her face remains dry. After a few moments of Sam and Stevie rocking her and telling her things will be all right, she's able to stand.<p>

The boys lead her over to the fire, setting her down on one of the benches, coaching her to take deep breaths and reminding her again and again that Brittany came to no harm. There's a quiet sort of empathy in Sam, like he understands what it's like to feel helpless and unable to do anything for one's beloved.

Santana supposes that he probably does understand, in some ways.

She's grateful to him when he offers her a drink of water from one of his family's canteens.

"Thank you," she says, though her insides still tremble.

Luckily, Puck doesn't notice anything having to do with Santana until she's started to calm. He somehow missed the whole commotion with Brittany while he stood on the far side of the backstage area having a very animated, whispered conversation with Rachel. Now he glances at Santana, surprised to see her away from the aperture in the tent but oblivious to the fact that she had been crying with Sam and Stevie Evans wrapped around her like quilts.

Puck daren't look at Santana for very long.

He's back to being edgy around her, just like he was at lunchtime.

He only meets her eyes for half a second, murmuring to Rachel that he has to go fix the torches and turning his back on the whole backstage, setting down to fidget at his staff.

Brittany and her father don't join in the grand exit parade, and Santana supposes that they've probably already gone back to their tent so that Brittany can change out of her torn costume and Mr. Pierce can elevate his foot.

It takes all of Santana's self-discipline not to run out of the big top and all the way to the family tent row the instant the matinee ends just to check on Brittany. She wraps her arms around her body and bites at her lip, forcing herself to remain in one place while Puck gathers up the gypsy gear.

Puck won't meet Santana's eyes for the whole time it takes him to outfit his satchel. When he finally stands up, he offers her only the quickest glance. "I've got to go, um—," he fumbles. "—I've, well. I'll find you later, ladybird, all right? Take is easy until then."

At any other time, what Puck says would strike Santana as a strange goodbye, but at present Santana can't force herself to think about anything having to do with Puck—not when her heart and mind are halfway across the camp with Brittany.

(Really, there's nothing wrong with Puck, as far as circus boys go, but Santana just can't fuss about him. She never has been able to.)

She only feels glad to see Puck go.

Santana waits just a few seconds after he takes his leave to take hers, setting off from the backstage area with all the haste and direction of a bullet shot from a pistol. She flies over thick grass and bare ground, scrabbling over loose rocks and almost turning her ankle as she sprints between derelict tents on the way to the family tent row. She makes it there in what must be record time, ignoring the searing ache in her side and how she thirsts for breath.

When she skids to a halt in front of the Pierce tent, she doesn't bother with propriety or keeping her voice down.

"Brittany?" she calls through the canvas.

She hears nothing.

No one.

No response.

Her thoughts swirl.

Where would Brittany be if not in the Pierce family tent with her father? Maybe looking for Santana at Santana and Puck's tent? No. Maybe getting her damaged costume to Mrs. Schuester to repair? After all, Mrs. Schuester will only have a few hours to sew up the tear before the evening show.

Santana dashes off in the direction of the dressing tents.

She and Brittany must have crossed paths without her realizing it, she reckons.

(Will it ever rain in Kenyon?)

As Santana happens onto the midway, she passes by Rory and Blaine in conversation with David and Matt and another companion—the same fellow who had bothered Santana on the train to Mankato with David.

At first, Santana thinks that the five boys might be discussing the unusual turnout at the morning matinee, but then she realizes that they're locked in argument, the burly supes aligned against the much smaller clowns.

Blaine still wears his face paint from the show. He holds his trilby hat in his hands, his usually slick hair messy with sweat and curly under the day heat. He situates his body between Rory and the supes like a barrier. Rory stands a pace behind Blaine, fists balled at his sides. His face is red but already cleaned of its decoration. Of the three supes, the one who gave Santana so much trouble on the train stands closest to Blaine, towering over him, chest puffed up. David and Matt flank this fellow as though they were his guards.

"—came back, didn't I?" Rory is defending himself.

"Guys, he didn't mean any harm! He'll be there for the whole night show!" Blaine chimes in.

"Y'all know what happens when we don't do half our work for the day?" the big supe challenges, giving Blaine a shove in the chest, pushing him back just as easily as if he weighed nothing. "Ken would fire us and requisition half our belongings to 'pay damages'!" he shouts. "What y'all clowns do? Skip out on half a performance, make a few little kiddies laugh, still stay on the lists, get paid twice as much as we do for doing less work?"

"Hey, back off 'em!" Matt warns his companion.

"Yeah, come on, Zeke!" Blaine implores, putting up his hands in a gesture of peace.

"Shut up, you little prick-eater!" the big supe—Zeke, Santana supposes—shoots back, slapping Blaine's hands down. "I'll back off when this little bog-trotter's half-whipped for only doing half-work for the day!"

Given another second, Santana feels certain that the boys will start to fight. She also feels certain that, if it comes to a fight, Blaine and Rory will be lucky to survive it—which is why it actually gladdens her when Ken appears from around the curve of the big top, already hollering at his workers.

"Come on, now!" he gruffs. "To work, all of you!"

His face is such an awful shade of purple that no one dares to argue with him. The supes and the clowns disengage from their confrontation, backing down from it immediately and allowing Ken to scatter them with a wave of his undersized bowler hat.

Santana takes a similar cue, not wanting Ken to scold her for standing about, and darts inside the ladies' dressing tent without thinking twice of it.

Immediately, Santana sees a half-dozen seamstresses working frantically to stitch together a long, white curtain of brocaded fabric, all of the girls arranged in a row, seated on stools around a makeshift table made up of overturned crates.

At first, Santana wonders what their project could be, but then she remembers her and Brittany's conversation from earlier in the day: the brocaded fabric is part of the backdrop for the weddings. It's Mrs. Schuester's wedding present to Mr. Adams' son.

The seamstresses look up from their task as Santana enters their presence, but Santana doesn't have the chance to ask them if they've seen Brittany before someone else appears.

Theresa Schuester herself.

If Mrs. Schuester is surprised that Santana would dare to enter her domain uninvited—and particularly considering that, at their last meeting, Mrs. Schuester slapped Santana across the face—she doesn't show it in the least.

A positively smug look curls her lips.

"Just the girl I wanted to see!" she says, honey only mostly masking the arsenic in her voice.

She traipses over to a work table and plucks up a folded-over heap of white fabric from it. At first, Santana worries that it's more brocade for the wedding backdrop, but then Mrs. Schuester explains.

"Brittany Pierce ripped her costume! I'd make her sew it up herself, but we need it done _before_ the evening show, and I don't suppose that she'd be quick enough at the job to make the deadline. You, on the other hand—you'll do fine."

She smiles at Santana, malicious.

"It only has to preserve Miss Pierce's modesty, so don't worry about making it pretty. A blind stitch through the back will work perfectly well. Don't dawdle about it."

Without waiting for Santana to respond, Mrs. Schuester thrusts Brittany's show costume into Santana's arms and reaches into a nearby bin, rustling out a sewing kit and adding that to Santana's pile, as well. Even if Santana wanted to object, the expression on Mrs. Schuester's face says that she won't hear it. Her eyes are even madder than Santana had remembered them being.

"Remember," Mrs. Schuester chides, "it needs to be done before the show. Do—not—let—Brittany—Pierce—distract—you!" she says, jabbing her finger hard into Santana's chest.

Santana winces and is about to retort that that won't be a problem seeing as she can't seem to find Brittany anywhere, but then she decides better of it. Even in her nervous state, Santana knows it wouldn't be wise to try Mrs. Schuester's patience today—and especially not with the whole circus already on edge.

Looking into Mrs. Schuester's mad eyes, Santana can't bring herself to say "Yes, ma'am," so she offers only a stiff nod instead. Thankfully, Mrs. Schuester doesn't seem to mind Santana's silence. She dismisses Santana with a flippant wave of her hand, as though Santana were a dog, and Santana makes her exit from the dressing tent posthaste.

* * *

><p>In a certain way, Santana supposes that if someone had to conscript her into doing chores, it was for the best that those chores would benefit Brittany. Still, she hates that Mrs. Schuester has managed to cut her search for Brittany short and hates being separated from Brittany even more.<p>

She feels so off-balance, like the horizon is spinning, and she knows she won't find her center again until she's wherever Brittany is and both of them are safe.

Workload in arms, Santana heads back out under the open sky, flinching when she notices that the day has turned darker since she entered the dressing tent. While it still has yet to rain in Kenyon, the clouds overhead are ceaseless and ominous. They move quickly, like boats caught on a current. Santana hurries her pace, eager to reach her tent.

Her hope now is that if she returns to her tent to sew, Brittany will find her there eventually. Still, she can't help but fret about Brittany in the meanwhile. After all, she can only imagine how shaken up she would have been if she had stood in Brittany's place.

What if Brittany is afraid or upset or crying? Santana's heart aches in her chest.

If Brittany doesn't find her first, Santana will just hurry up with the sewing job and search for Brittany afterward. She won't go to the evening fair until they've seen each other, until she can hold Brittany in her arms and see that Brittany is all right for herself. If Brittany isn't all right, they won't go anywhere.

(Mr. Adams and Ken and the company can choke on their show, for all Santana cares.)

As Santana approaches her tent, she only just remembers to call out before going inside.

"Puck?"

When no one answers, Santana opens the flap and ducks inside. She finds the tent cabin gloomy but thankfully unoccupied. Her only consolation for having to work in the near-dark is that her stitching doesn't need to be pretty—just functional. It will be white thread on a white costume. No one will even be able to see it from the stands.

Leaving the door open behind her so as to allow as much light into the tent as possible, Santana drops down onto the ground, setting her sewing kit at her side. She makes certain to keep Brittany's costume in her lap so as not to stain it on the grass, knowing how Brittany frets about keeping it clean.

Since leaving the dressing tent, Santana's heartbeat has slowed, and her breathing has evened out. She's calmed somewhat. But still, her hands tremble. She can scarcely smooth the costume's fabric down over her thigh.

"Goddamn it!" she curses, borrowing one of Puck's favorite blasphemies. "Settle down," she commands herself, struggling to unbutton the leather pouch and pick out a needle and thread for her work. "Settle down, settle down. Breathe. Breathe."

No matter how Santana attempts to thread her needle, her hands won't cooperate. She struggles at the task for five full minutes, missing the needle's eye again and again, and only manages to accomplish it after wetting the tip of the thread in her mouth.

Another several minutes pass before she can tie a knot in the thread.

When at last she cinches her knot into place, she closes her eyes, trying to remember what a blind stitch looks like.

All of her grandmother's old sewing lessons seem a million miles and years away from her, like something she's only read about in a book and hasn't lived for herself. Was there ever such a place as the bachelor cottage? Such a life wherein the greatest challenge in a day was trying to darn ripped fabric?

(A world beyond the circus?)

The blind stitch is actually a simple one, once Santana makes herself remember it. She smoothes out the torn part of Brittany's skirt over her lap and checks to see how deep the cut runs. As suspected, she finds that it goes all the way through not only Brittany's outer skirt, but Brittany's petticoats, as well. The straight fabric on the outer garment will be much easier to sew than the frilly fabric on the inner one, but neither job should prove especially difficult once Santana sets to them.

Santana readies the needle in her hand and breathes in deeply between her teeth.

With the tremor still only mostly worked out of her hands, she inserts the needle into the outskirt, pushing it carefully through to about an eighth of an inch. It's difficult to manage her work, and she shakes even worse pulling the needle out than she did putting it in. She mismeasures the second puncture and has to reset. The first stitch has to be small; the subsequent stitches will become progressively larger and then smaller again, so that the final stitching pattern will have an oblong shape, like a white willow leaf.

"Come on," she coaches herself, guiding her needle through angel white.

She sets her first stitch.

Her work should only get easier from here.

But it doesn't.

The instant she inserts the needle to start the second stitch, she feels a sharp jab in her index finger and flinches away from the pain, dropping the needle at once. She shakes her hand to numb the pain on impulse but oughtn't to do it, for as soon as she does so, two drops of bright red spatter onto the white of Brittany's costume.

Immediately, Santana stiffens.

Two weeks ago, Santana wouldn't have thought anything about bleeding onto fabric except to worry about leaving a stain, but now dread wells in her chest, enough to almost make her sick.

Red blood on shooting star white can't bring anything good with it.

It's got to be worse than a bad news moon, than a wailing elephant, the evil eye, or having a gilly in camp between shows.

The practical part of Santana knows it would be silly for her to fret about it.

(But the part of Santana that doesn't think but only feels hunkers down, waiting.)

* * *

><p>Santana tries to scrub the blood from Brittany's skirt in the steel washbasin, but the water is too tepid to lift the stain.<p>

Thankfully, the stain itself is small enough that it will hardly be visible to the circus audience from their vantage point in the bleachers. Even more thankfully, the flounce of Brittany's skirt will probably obscure the stain to most people standing nearby her. Perhaps most thankfully of all, if Brittany were to have the skirt laundered, soap might remove the stain entirely.

Still, Santana still very much regrets making the stain in the first place. She hadn't wanted to dirty Brittany's costume, if she could help it. She'll have to apologize to Brittany once they're together again.

Needle prick notwithstanding, Santana actually finds it relatively easy to repair the tear in Brittany's costume once she gets to it. The blind stitch is a simple one, and Santana soon falls into the same sort of trance that always overtakes her when she's at her handiwork. Her fingers know how to move without her giving much conscious thought to how to move them. She pauses whenever thunder rolls and listens continually for the patter of rain on the tent canvas but never actually hears it.

Maybe a half-hour passes, maybe more time than that, but, whatever the case, Santana finishes her chore long before the warning bell rings. She repacks her sewing kit and gathers up Brittany's costume, pausing to suck the tip of her pricked finger, which has long since stopped bleeding, though it still throbs with phantom pain.

Santana isn't keen to return to the dressing tent to face Mrs. Schuester again, but she knows better than to give Mrs. Schuester the runaround on a day like this one, when everything at the circus is already in such disarray.

With the costume and sewing kit tucked under her arm, she retraces her steps back to the place from which she came. Lightning fractures down the sky, spreading out into a long, vivid latticework. Warm wind tries to rob Santana of the load that she carries under her arm, but she holds tightly to it. The earth and sky groan like old people settling down to rest in their rockers. The storm threatens like it has all day, but nothing comes of it.

Usually, it's rare for Santana to encounter many people on her hikes across camp between shows. Company members tend either to stick to their own tents or to have chores of their own to do in the diverse parts of the white city. Seldom does anyone just lounge about.

Not so today.

Though the journey from Santana's tent to the dressing tents is not a particularly long or circuitous one, she passes no fewer than a dozen company members standing idly out-of-doors.

Some of these people watch the sky, waiting for rain that may or may not come, while others of them divert themselves, playing card games in groups of twos or threes, reading newspapers, smoking pipes, entertaining their children, talking with their heads pressed close together.

When Santana passes by the idlers, they stare at her with a coyote kind of scrutiny, uncertain as to how to regard her. There's a hard resolve in their expressions. They've made their choice and will stick to it. Even if Ken were to come barreling in with threats, Santana suspects that most of them wouldn't budge an inch.

Santana tries not to look on any faces for too long, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that she's doing work while others are not. She doesn't mean to make trouble. She's just following Mrs. Schuester's orders, after all.

Receiving a paycheck from Mr. Adams has never made much of a difference to Santana anyway; as long as she has a roof over her head and food to eat and can be with Brittany, she thinks life is swell.

Santana doesn't disparage the other circus folk for feeling slighted, though. She can only imagine how it would be to have a wife and child in need of support and nothing to support them with.

Crossing under the billboard partition, Santana hurries inside the ladies' dressing tent. She scans to see if Mrs. Schuester is about—she isn't—before heading over to one of the seamstresses at the end of the makeshift table. It's a girl Santana recognizes from the Independence Day spectacular, one of the attendants who applied the bootblack to Santana's face.

"Can you please make sure this gets to Mrs. Schuester?" Santana asks, setting the costume and sewing kit down on the table.

The girl smirks at Santana like she knows what Santana is playing at, trying to avoid speaking to Mrs. Schuester directly. The girl laughs. "No problem, cookie," she says, and the other girls around her laugh, too.

Two weeks ago, Santana might have shouted at the girl for making fun of her, but now she finds that she doesn't especially care what the girl has to say. She offers the girl a very tight, very false smile. "Thank you," she says, voice surfeit with false kindness, turning on her heel and hurrying out of the dressing tent before Mrs. Schuester can spot her.

Not knowing how much time she has left before the warning bell rings for the afternoon fair, Santana decides to find Brittany as quickly as possible, if only so they can see each other for a few minutes before they have to perform.

Though Brittany wasn't at her tent immediately after the matinee, Santana suspects she might be there now, perhaps tending to her father, and so starts off in the direction of the family tent row, taking a straight path to her destination so as to avoid too many unwanted encounters with the company along the way.

Feeling perhaps a bit more cautious than before, Santana stops outside the Pierce's tent once she reaches it, listening for Brittany rather than shouting for her to start out. The camp is much noisier now than it was earlier, with wind and distant human and animal commotion covering up whatever small breathings that Santana might perceive through the tent wall. Though she can't be certain, Santana doesn't think she hears any sounds coming from behind the canvas and so sneaks around to the side of the tent where Brittany's cot is located. She pauses for a second, waiting to pick up on rustlings or murmurs.

For a second, Santana allows herself to imagine what it would be like if Brittany's wish from yesterday could come true—what it could be like if she and Brittany had a tent of their own, where they lived together.

What a kinder sort of world it would be if Santana could slip through the tent flap at her leisure and find Brittany waiting for her in a place that belonged to the both of them jointly? How much better would life be if they could dwell in place where they both belonged, if Santana never had to skulk outside of a tent that belongs to Brittany's father, hoping not to wake him as she determines Brittany's whereabouts?

"Britt?" she hisses, face pressed close to the tent wall.

Nothing.

"Brittany Pierce?"

Nothing again.

Santana sighs. It occurs to her then that maybe someone conscripted Brittany into doing chores, just like what happened with her when she had the misfortune to happen upon Mrs. Schuester in the dressing tent.

Since Santana didn't encounter Brittany anywhere on the course of her travels between her own tent and the business side of camp, she figures that if Brittany has found work somewhere, it's likely in the mess pit.

Maybe she even volunteered.

(It's in Brittany's nature to offer help to people who need it before they even ask.)

* * *

><p>Electricity charges the air, lifting flyaway hair strands from Santana's neck and face, nipping with static sparks at the undersides of her bare feet, and wind moves the tall grasses in currents, sending ripples across the prairie. Though the day is still oppressively hot, Santana shudders, disconcerted by the way the Minnesota countryside seems to live and teem all around her.<p>

When she arrives at the mess pit, she finds the space more densely populated than she might have expected it to be, with Ma's kitchen girls at their usual posts around the hearth and a rabble of supes, clowns, and sideshow freaks gathered at the dining table, huddled under the blue tarp in anticipation of rain.

The odd thing is that no one in the mess pit seems to be working, not even the kitchen staff.

And Ma Jones is nowhere in sight.

At the center of everything sits Puck, Rory at his side. Puck holds his wooden eagle head in one hand and a whittling knife in the other. He makes long, sure strokes down the eagle's beak with the knife blade, shaving curlicue chips away and smoothing out his carving, careful not to lop off the eagle's nostrils as he goes.

Rory leans in close to Puck, talking to him in a furious whisper. He wears a scoffing expression, his face uncharacteristically hard with derision. Even though Santana can't pick out Rory's words from where she stands, she can well enough discern the nature of his discourse.

He did ignore Ken's orders to get back to work, after all.

Puck tolerates Rory's ranting, though perhaps only momentarily, furrowing his brow and setting his jaw, stern. He acts almost as if he were waiting for Rory to say something overbold or blatantly untrue just so he could pop him for it. In a certain way, he reminds Santana of an old dog humoring an obnoxious puppy. If Rory speaks one word against Mr. Adams rather than against just the awfulness of going without pay, Santana feels certain that Puck will lay Rory out flat on the dirt.

Before today, Rory had always struck Santana as a placid boy, dopey and eager just to go along with everything, but now she sees that he has thrown in his lot with the most discontented workers at the circus.

(Will Rory even bother to turn up to the evening show at all tonight?)

As surprising as it is to Santana to see Rory lumped in with the members of the company who refuse to do their work, it surprises her even more to see Puck spending his time with them, too. Doesn't Puck have work to do? Shouldn't he have chores to finish at this hour? What about his mysterious business off in town? Has he given that up so soon?

Usually, Puck isn't one to ignore the needs of the circus.

At the same instant that Santana spots Puck, he seems to spot her, as well. He holds up a hand to Rory, silencing the boy at once, and discards his whittling on the bench at his side. As Santana draws closer to Puck, he stands, doffing his hat in greeting to her.

Only once he's on his feet does Santana see that he isn't wearing his gypsy costume. He's changed into his street clothes, as if today were a down day. He must have swapped his outfit before Santana went back to their tent to sew Brittany's costume.

But why?

"Puck, what're you—? What's going on?" Santana stammers.

She feels as disoriented as if someone had spun her in circles and then bidden her to walk a straight line afterward. Puck crushes his hat between his fingers, kneading at it. He wears neither his idiot smile nor his devil smirk.

"Santana," he says, stopping before Santana, just beside the hearth.

Never has Santana run up against the invisible wall inside herself so quickly before.

In all the time they've known one another, Puck has never called Santana by her given name to her face, and has only ever spoken her given name aloud on the few occasions when he's made introductions for Santana at the boarding house and when she first arrived at the circus.

Back at the bachelor cottage, before Abuela died, Puck mostly called Santana nothing at all.

Once, he had forgone trimming the rosebushes because he hadn't wanted to disturb Santana, who had been reading under their shade when he arrived with his sheers. When he explained to Santana's father the reason why the bushes were so long and unkempt, he referenced Santana obliquely as "the little miss."

But beyond that, it was nothing.

He hadn't dared to address Santana directly.

After Abuela died, Puck found Santana crying in the garden one day, _Rob Roy_ spread out in her lap and tears hot on her cheeks. He'd stooped down beside her and offered her his idiot smile.

_"What's a sweet ladybird like you doing crying like that?"_ he had asked.

His question had stopped Santana's tears and gotten her to laugh a bit.

(Back then, she had only wanted someone to find her. For a second, she had thought that that someone was Puck, back before she had known that finding someone involves so much more than just stumbling upon her when she's hiding.)

From then on, Puck had had no other name for Santana than that one. It was always "ladybird this" and "ladybird that," to the point where sometimes Santana wondered if Puck had forgotten her given name altogether or so disliked it from the start that he'd put it out of his mind at his soonest possible convenience.

To hear Puck call her by her given name now after so many countless "ladybirds" have taken wing from his lips stops Santana in her tracks. Dread punches through her with an iron fist.

_Oh God._

_Oh God._

_No._

Santana isn't sure what Puck's up to, but she knows she doesn't like it. If he's calling her by her given name, there must be a reason for it, and that reason can't be anything that will please her once she knows what it is. Santana's intuition already has an idea of what the reason is, but her mind doesn't want to process it.

It refuses.

"Wha—?" Santana tries to say to preempt Puck if she can.

But she can't.

Everything happens slowly, like a story sequenced out in kineograph: Puck drops to one knee. He sets his hat on the ground at his side. His eyes turn little-boy soft and imploring. He reaches into the pocket of his slacks, hands disappearing from sight for what seems like forever.

Santana can't breathe.

When he produces a small, lacquered box from his pocket, Santana almost wants to laugh at the awfulness of the joke.

He isn't.

He can't be.

He wouldn't.

He opens the box at its hinges, offering up its contents for Santana to survey. Inside, she finds a dainty band of light-colored gold with no stone but settings placed for one. It must have cost Puck at least ten dollars to buy or maybe more—a small fortune. Santana's heart seizes in her chest but not for any giddy reason.

_Oh God._

"Santana," Puck repeats, not daring to meet her eyes but speaking in a loud, clear voice so that everyone gathered in the mess pit can hear him very plainly. "I wanted to do this yesterday, for your birthday and all," he says, almost by way of apology. His voice is tight and gruff, "—and I wanted to buy you a bigger ring with a real diamond in it or at least a ruby or an emerald or something half as pretty as you are, but I would have had to save for another five years, and Mr. Adams has already been kind enough, letting me take work in town over these last few days to put down a payment for this band. I figure I can always buy you a stone later, whatever kind you like. But I knew it weren't every day when we'd be someplace where they wouldn't mind hitching up two folks like you and me and where there'd already be a preacher around, you know? Kenyon is our stop, Santana. It's you and me, from here on out."

For the first time in minutes, Puck chances a glance at Santana's face. Whatever he sees in her expression, he misreads. Grossly. He quickly diverts his eyes again.

"I don't mean to embarrass you," he says more quietly, "but in the end, it don't even matter, I figure. The folks around here know you're a good girl and that sometimes you've gotta make due with what you've got until life catches up to you. In any case, I'll make an honest woman of you, Santana. It don't matter that it weren't official at first because it will be now, even Mr. Adams thinks so. I'm going to do right by you.

Back in New York, I told you that if you chose to come along with me, then that was it, it was as good as done, and I meant it. Now I know you don't feel quite the same way as I do about things, but I think that could change, if you'd just give me a chance.

You make me feel like a better man every day I know you, and I could make you so happy.

I love you, Santana.

And I'll take care of you from now until the day I die. I want us to be a real family, to grow old together. So will you please, maybe, give me the honor—"

_Oh God._

_Oh sweet Jesus._

_Oh Dios de los cielos y San José y San Mateo y todos los ángeles._

"—of being my wife? For the honest truth this time? Before God and the law and everybody? Say yes, and we can get hitched up tomorrow, right after the other two weddings. Mr. Adams gave his permission. And after the season ends, I'll take you to Niagara Falls for a proper honeymoon or maybe to Vienna, even. Just say yes, Santana. Please."

When Puck finally locks eyes with Santana, he couldn't be milder at all.

He's the little boy who has endeared himself to Santana on certain rare occasions over the course of their acquaintance and the generous man who saved her from a destitute life after her father's lawyers evicted her from the bachelor cottage, as well.

He's the new gardener who first called Santana "ladybird" near the Sweet Williams to make her smile and the charming thief who stole a copy of the _Scribner_—the one with Santana's favorite story in it—from out of the moving crates in the front foyer and gave it to her as a gift on the night when he checked her in at the Tenderloin boarding house and left her there to stay.

He's still got the poor man's haircut that Santana gave him the other day between shows and the clumsy, unpracticed sort of adoration in his eyes that's been there ever since he and Santana quarreled in their tent and he realized that he needed to be gentler with her.

As far as circus boys go, Noah Puckerman—this Puck—is one of the best of them.

But.

Santana Lopez never has been able to fuss about him.

She hadn't wanted her name to be his name even before she met Brittany. She had never wanted Puck, only needed him. And now she's not even certain that she can go on needing him anymore.

Not if it means this.

Santana just wants Brittany and has since her second day at the circus. She doesn't want Puck or Sam or any of the circus boys. She doesn't want anyone in the world but Brittany at all. Brittany was the someone who really found Santana in her hiding places. Santana fell in love with Brittany so easily and completely that she didn't even realize that she was in love at first; she had only known that she felt happy and safe and hopeful in a way that she had never felt before, not even when she lived with her family in New York, back before tarot cards and funerals and curses existed in her world.

Now that Santana does know that this grand, passionate, ceaseless feeling—that what she feels for Brittany—is love, it's her one true thing.

When Santana first arrived at the circus, Puck told her the truth didn't matter anymore, but Santana knows now that he was wrong.

It matters more than anything.

Guilt grips Santana's throat in a stranglehold. She had been prepared to tell Puck beautiful lies for years or a whole lifetime even if he would have only allowed her to do it, if he hadn't ruined everything by falling in love with her.

Foolish, foolish boy!

Santana almost wants to hate Puck for his mistake, except that she knows now that no one can help who they fall in love with. She only wishes that it hadn't been her for him—that it would have been someone who could love him back.

"I can't."

* * *

><p>How queer it is that the girl who brings death with her wherever she goes has never once broken someone's heart until now.<p>

Puck's mouth opens, but he can't seem to either inhale or exhale. He looks stabbed and stunned, his eyes shifted to one side and his jaw hung slack. He blinks almost a dozen times in just a few seconds. His shoulders slump and he immediately lowers his hands, still holding the lacquered box, so that his knuckles rest upon the earth, and he can lean on them for his support.

He looks like he's died because Santana said no.

"Noah, I'm sorry," Santana chokes out.

And then she's gone.

Her feet carry her when her head can't think and when she can't hear anything but her own pulse pounding hard in her ears. She staggers out of the mess pit, only vaguely aware of the crowd gawping at her as she goes.

On the periphery of her consciousness, she knows that this is it—that she's just severed her tie to the circus by refusing Puck's proposal. Now that everyone knows that she and Puck were never married from the start, Mr. Adams cannot permit her to remain on the lists. It would be his disgrace because of hers. He'll have to turn her out on the street before the evening show in order to save face.

Puck won't ever want to see Santana again.

Strange as it is, though Santana has wept more tears over the past two days than any girl of her age has any business weeping, she doesn't feel any need to cry now. Somehow, her present circumstances seem inevitable. There was never any question as to whether or not Puck would eventually learn that Santana couldn't love him. It was always only a matter of time—a question of when he would learn it and how.

In a grim way, Santana supposes that today is as good a day as any for Puck to finally hear the truth from her.

The further away she gets from the mess pit, the more and more a high, hot clarity seizes her.

For the first time since she stumbled into the mess pit and Puck proposed to her, Santana can think clearly and with decision. She knows that she has only one path to follow and one place where she must be now.

(Wherever Brittany waits, Santana will find her.)

Santana crisscrosses the tent rows, turning corners and sprinting down narrow alleyways. She wonders where she ought to look for Brittany first. At her and Puck's tent? In the big top? Back on the family tent row? She stumbles to a halt just a few yards from the billboard partition, wanting to get her bearings before she proceeds in her search, but then something catches her attention.

The babble of a crowd carried on the wind.

Raised voices just in the distance.

Santana turns toward the sound. It comes from the other side of the billboard partition—the commercial side of camp. She shifts her head slightly, peering between the breaks in the partition to look out onto the midway.

It's then that she sees it.

A mob.

What must be the majority of the circus company has amassed upon the midway pitch, thronging and shouting out in abusive cacophony. A garble of expletives and complaints roar up from them. They shake their fists and writhe against one another, as if someone has busted in the gates of hell and let all the devils out at once.

Though Santana wouldn't expect to find Brittany participating in a mob, she still can't help but wonder if she oughtn't to look for Brittany in the crowd anyway. After all, maybe Brittany feels as curious as Santana does about what's going on here. Maybe Brittany is with her father or with Sam, caught up in the rabble of circus employees.

Without a second thought to it, Santana ducks under the billboard partition, which casts no colors under stormy skies. She enters the crowd just at its back, slipping in between countless elbows and arms. Only when she bounces on her tiptoes, bobbing up and down as though she were trying to remain above the waves while wading out to sea, can she espy the source of the commotion.

Mr. Adams stands at the head of the midway pitch, perched on an overturned crate, silhouetted between the heavens and the earth. He shouts at his employees, and they shout at him, both parties drowning out one another's words. Mr. Adams' face burns scarlet beneath his dark beard, like someone had boiled his head in scalding water. He shakes his fists and gestures as if to shoo a bothersome pack of roving dogs from his house porch.

The persons at the front of the mob seem outright hostile toward Mr. Adams while the persons at the back of the mob nearest to Santana appear much more tentative and undecided concerning how to regard him.

Santana searches the crowd for any hints of sunshine gold or starlit blue, but finds it difficult to see more than a few feet to the front of her at a time. There are so many bodies and so much motion that it's almost impossible to keep track of any one person or thing for more than an instant.

When Santana catches a flash of blonde just a few yards ahead of her, she almost cheers for it.

But then she realizes that it isn't Pierce-blonde.

It's Evans-blonde.

Sam and his father stand observing the mob rather than participating in it. Both men appear sullen and tight-jawed. Neither one of them speaks.

They're not the only persons Santana recognizes among the crowd, either: the Bearded Lady and Famed Giantess of Akron tower over many of the men around them; and the severe, hawkish matron of the Sylvesteri Equestrienne Coterie shouts out over the din in her hard, craggy language. Santana thinks she can pick out Matt, David, and Zeke near the front of the mob, close to Mr. Adams.

Blaine Anderson stands only a few yards away from Santana. He spots her through a break in the crowd and hails her at once, starting to move toward her at the same time that she moves toward him.

His face still bears stains from his clown paint, his nose redder than it would be naturally but no longer such a bright shade of cherry. His cheeks are ghostly pale under a film of powder white. He looks like the afterimage of a clown, fading from visibility on the undersides of someone's eyelids.

"Santana!" he says, tripping over to her and grabbing her by the arm, tethering them together against the surges of the crowd.

"What's going on?" Santana shouts, her question all but swallowed up in the angry roar on all sides of her.

Neither Santana nor Blaine stands tall enough to see over the heads and shoulders of the mob flatfooted, so it's doubtful that Blaine has taken in much more of this scene than Santana has in the commotion. Even so, Santana hopes that Blaine will at least be able to tell her something about what's happening here—and maybe something about where she can find Brittany, as well.

"It's the Fabray girl!" Blaine answers, yanking Santana out of the way of a thrown elbow.

For his word, something pricks inside Santana. With everything that had happened since the matinee, she had forgotten about the awful, honest palm reading she had given to Quinn Fabray at the morning fair.

If something's happened to Quinn since then—

It can't be, though.

Santana didn't read her cards.

She didn't even read Quinn's hand.

She couldn't.

"What about her?" Santana asks.

She casts a worried glance to where Mr. Adams stands at the head of the pitch. The roar that surrounds her and Blaine may well deafen them, as several hundred people shout both over one another's voices and the rumblings of the thunderstorm all at the same time. Everything inside the mob feels hot and close and hectic. When Blaine next speaks, Santana can barely hear his voice and must watch his lips in order to discern his words.

"She's gone missing! Ran away!" Blaine answers. "And Mr. Fabray told Mr. Adams that he won't sign the papers if there's no wedding! That means we won't be paid again!"

A portly, baldheaded man in work overalls standing just beside Blaine and Santana turns to Blaine and smirks. "That don't just mean we won't get paid, kid!" he says bitterly. "It means there won't be a circus!"

The bottom drops out from Santana's stomach. "Jesus," she gasps, holding onto Blaine by both arms. She feels the same lurch that she does whenever the morning train first starts up along its tracks. Quinn ran away from the circus? From her father? But where did she go? How could she?

(There are some kinds of mistakes that can't be undone, Santana knows, she knows, she knows. Did Quinn just make one? Did she?)

Santana wants to ask Blaine how Mr. Fabray and Mr. Adams know that Quinn ran away and if they've summoned the authorities to search for her yet, but just then the commotion coming from the front of the mob grows louder, demanding both Santana and Blaine's attention. Santana focuses in on the noise, listening until she can pick out individual words from it.

"The warning bell should be ringing right now, you miscreants!" comes the familiar roar. "Any man who doesn't take his post shall forfeit his employment on the spot! I won't pay you to do nothing!"

"You don't pay us anyhow!"

Santana has certainly heard company members mock Mr. Adams before but never like this—not with such contempt plain in their voices or such disregard for his position and authority in their words. Santana envisions a mighty lion beset by jackals, battling them with his great paws though they overwhelm him by sheer numbers and the quick snaps of their keen chops.

"You'll test me?" Mr. Adams bellows, puffing up so that Santana can just see the top of his head over the motion of the mob. Thunder snarls at his back. "So be it, then! The following men will have a half-hour to vacate the circus grounds, and after that I'll summon the police to have them arrested for trespassing and loitering."

He produces something from his waistcoat pocket—or at least Santana thinks that he does. Santana can't see what the something is, though.

"Golly," Blaine whispers, close enough to Santana's ear for her to hear it.

Mr. Adams gives the names: "Hudson, Finn! Kemper, Peter! Podinsky, Rolf! Tinsley, Shane!"

The mob lets up an animal chorus of indignation, and the four men Mr. Adams named appear in view as the people closest to them step back, revealing where they stand. Though Finn Hudson has his back to Santana, she can imagine his expression: stunned and hapless. She thinks she hears his voice.

"You can't do this! What about my mother?"

Someone else—maybe one of the other men who just lost his employment—chimes in with another complaint that Santana can't discern. Several more members of the company shout out in protest, but Mr. Adams shouts back at them.

"It's final!" he bellows. "And you're all fools if you think I won't list more names yet! Now you men who are no longer under my employ ought to go collect your things! You haven't long before the townsfolk start arriving for the show or before I have the police after you!"

One of the four men yells out a very vulgar word just as a peal of thunder rings out over the scene, so deep and resonant that it almost seems to quake the earth. In the distance, a great wail sounds; Methuselah in distress again. The word, the thunder, and the elephant wail all echo together, the mob falling strangely silent as these three sounds take ownership of the air.

Everyone stops their commotion. In that instant, the crowd seems to realize at once what's happening—what's happened—that Mr. Adams has just discharged four supes from his employ, and that he will likely discharge even more supes or maybe even performers in the next few minutes if anyone dares try his will.

Since her arrival at the circus, Santana has often wondered whether or not Mr. Jonah P. Adams is a good man. She still wonders that even now, looking up between two sets of shoulders to see his face blanched back to its original color, his features gaunt and haunted as he stares out over his company, breathing heavily through his nostrils, a great, invisible weight rested on his back.

For a moment, Santana remembers Mr. Bulwer-Lytton's Glaucus, motionless and seething in the arena, his lion subdued but his fate uncertain. She recalls how, in the book, just at the moment when Glaucus received his reprieve, ash and stone began to spill down over the doomed white city all around him.

She knows that Mr. Adams has had what he considers to be his moment of justice now, but will it even matter at all, she wonders—will it matter now that Mr. Fabray won't buy half the circus?

"Forget this!" Finn yells, kicking out at one of the derelict crates lining the midway, sending it sprawling over the grass. "I'm out of here!"

There's an ugly twist in his features and tears in his voice. Though Santana hadn't ever known Finn well, she does still pity him. Stone guilt nags in the pit of her stomach. Is it her fault that he just lost his job? Did something she has said cause Quinn Fabray to run away from her impending future? Santana can hardly stand to think that all of this—the death throes of the circus—might somehow be her doing.

An invisible knife twists deep within her.

Finn storms off down the midway, people in the crowd parting to let him through. The two other unemployed supes whom Santana doesn't know also go away, grumbling and cursing, slapping their hats against their legs in frustration, until suddenly only Shane Tinsley remains at the head of the pitch. Momentarily, Santana wonders why Shane won't make his exit, too, but then Shane extends his hand to something—to someone.

Ma Jones stands on the edge of the crowd, her hands balled in her apron.

She looks dumbstruck and suddenly heartbroken all over again.

Shane mumbles something to her, his voice too soft for Santana to hear, though both the crowd and Mr. Adams have turned almost entirely silent by now. Shane opens and closes and opens his hand, expecting Ma Jones to reach out and take it.

Ma doesn't move.

Doesn't breathe.

She's run up against an invisible wall inside herself.

Shane speaks again, this time louder so Santana can hear him: "Let's go get your things," he says, gesturing again for Ma to take his hand. He waits for her, patient.

Only.

Santana stands up on her tiptoes, and Blaine places his hand on the flat of her back to help her keep her balance, holding her up as if he were the ballerino to her ballerina en pointe. From her new vantage point, Santana can see Ma Jones clearly. She knows as soon as she looks on Ma's face.

Ma doesn't want to go with Shane.

Ma glances between the crowd and her fiancé, knotting her hands deeper in her apron. Even from far away, her eyes look wide and uncertain. A stitch furrows deep in her brow.

Gone is the war marshal. Gone is the archangel. Gone is the woman who Santana once thought invincible.

In her place stands someone who Santana recognizes as she would her own old reflection in a mirror: the girl hugging herself in the foyer of the empty bachelor cottage, everything she'd ever known shunted into boxes and crates, labeled for storage and resale.

There's a boy holding out his hand to her, telling her that they haven't any more time to wait, that they must go, that it's time to say goodbye to the house and everything in it.

She doesn't want to take his hand.

(And she never wanted him or his name.)

Santana draws a hand up to her face, covering her mouth. She can't breathe. If Ma Jones goes away with Shane, it will break her heart. People are supposed to run away to join the circus, not run away from the circus once they've joined it.

"Mr. Tinsley," Ma stammers. "I don't—I don't—"

Santana doesn't know precisely what is in Ma's mind, but she can intuit it well enough. Ma's sentence trails away as she forces herself to think about rules, propriety, and practicality. She furrows her brow even more than she had done before, uncertain how to express herself or even if the rules permit her to do so.

A surge of indignation wells in Santana on Ma's behalf. How dare Shane Tinsley try to make her—to make the mighty Ma Jones, who rules over the mess pit as a queen!—leave the circus when he lost his measly two-bit job but she still has hers and is irreplaceable in it?

"She doesn't have to go with you."

If Santana didn't recognize the voice speaking them right away, she would have thought that she had said the words aloud herself.

Sam Evans parts the crowd, taking a few steps toward Ma Jones, stopping where she can see him. He wears a steely expression, his jaw still set and his demeanor still sullen. He also looks impossibly tired and so much older than he did two weeks ago. He fixes Shane with a look that isn't menacing, just serious.

"Mr. Adams didn't discharge her. Just you."

Shane starts to rebut. "Ain't none of your—," he says.

"She doesn't have to go with you!" Sam repeats, his statement overpowering Shane's, a surge of frustration behind it. The crowd jitters with excitement, but then Sam seems to shrink. He softens. "Not if she doesn't want to," he says, uncertainty seeping into his voice. He turns to Ma herself. "You don't want to... do you, Miss Mary?"

Sam looks as soft and small as if he had just asked Ma Jones a very different question altogether.

It had never occurred to Santana that Ma Jones might have another name than Ma. Somehow, she had never thought to ask. She supposes that it would make sense that Sam might know Ma Jones by her real name, though. After all, he's the boy who really sees her when she's invisible to everyone else. He's the boy who finds her in her hidden places.

Ma Jones falters for a second longer, her eyes darting between Sam and Shane, scanning over the crowd, and finally glancing at Mr. Adams, situated to her side. Her expression turns from one of confusion and entrapment to something else that Santana can't read. She looks back to Shane.

"Mr. Tinsley, I'm sorry," she says, quiet, "but I won't be going with you. You're a fine man, and you have been good to me, but the circus is my home. Ever since my daddy died and my mama brought me here when I was just a little girl, this is where I've belonged. It's where my friends are—and my family. I have a job to do here, and I am good at it. I know it don't seem like much, cooking and looking over a kitchen, but I take pride in what I do. Ain't no one better than me at this job, and it would take a bigger fool than me to give up something so good. I wish you well, Shane. I hope you find yourself a missus someday, but that girl just ain't me. You can have your ring back"—she slips it from her finger—"because I'm staying here. I'm staying at my home."

She extends the ring to Shane, taking a few tentative steps toward him.

He holds up his hand to stop her. "Don't," he says, unable to meet her eyes.

But Ma insists. She closes the distance and presses the ring into Shane's extended palm, curling her fingers over his to close it in his fist. For a second, her touch lingers. If Santana had to guess, she would say that Ma had given Shane's hand a squeeze. Shane nods at her and pulls away, lowering his arm and setting his hat on his head. He keeps his gaze on the dirt as he takes his leave, following the same path that Finn and the other discharged supes took through the crowd.

Ma Jones winces to see him go.

By now, Santana is more than accustomed to experiencing multiple emotions at once, so it doesn't surprise her to feel both an ache in her heart and a skip in it. She doesn't envy any girl who has to hurt a good boy just because he isn't the best person for her, but she also couldn't be gladder that her friend Ma Jones has decided to remain at the circus after all.

Though the whole situation still seems so dire, for a second, Santana allows herself to wonder if maybe Ma staying isn't a bon token—if maybe it means that something might turn out well in the end and that there's a chance for the circus yet.

The mob answers Santana's question sooner than she might have liked.

"So what? We've got our cook?" someone shouts. "That don't change a thing if Adams don't pay us! We won't work for free, Adams! We'll strike!"

"Strike!" someone agrees.

"Strike!" comes a third.

"You can't fire all of us, you weasel! You won't have nothin' left!"

"Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!"

Whatever happiness Santana had felt because of Ma Jones winnows away in an instant, leaving only the ache in Santana's heart behind in its wake. More guilt and anxiety seize Santana as the mob breaks out in more shouting and commotion. Blaine yanks Santana down onto flat feet, pulling her back as some of the men in front of her start to throw out the arms and make motion, nearly knocking into her.

"Are you going to join the strike?" Blaine shouts, glancing between Santana and what's happening at the head of the mob.

It hadn't occurred to Santana until Blaine asked that just by saying so, she could join the strike. Blaine himself seems torn, his expression wide and worried. Maybe he wouldn't want to strike if it were put to him, but he probably also doesn't want to become a blackleg now that a strike is inevitable. He's so small and unassuming that the other men could easily tear his limbs off if he tried to break the line.

Maybe it would have mattered what Santana thought about the strike if she had accepted Puck's proposal and was going to be his little wife.

But she didn't.

And she isn't.

The high, hot clarity returns to her, and she comes to a sudden realization: this isn't her fight. Ma Jones may have decided to remain at the circus, but Santana doesn't have that choice to make and hasn't even a tent in which to spend the night now, not after refusing Puck. The invisible knife in her belly twists harder. Maybe the circus was never really Santana's home at all. Maybe for her home has always been just one person.

"Where's Brittany?" she shouts, ignoring Blaine's question.

"What?" Blaine asks, confused.

"Where's Brittany, Blaine? I need to find her! I have to go to her!" Santana explains, searching frantically over Blaine's shoulders even as she clings to him, as if Brittany might have somehow appeared somewhere nearby since last Santana scanned the crowd.

Blaine's mouth falls open and his eyebrows knit together, but he doesn't have the chance to answer Santana's question before something else happens towards the front of the mob.

"What's he doing?" someone bellows.

A hand just a few yards to the front of where Santana and Blaine stand flies up and they follow where it points to see some movement at the front of the crowd. Instantly, both Santana and Blaine are on their tiptoes again, dancing to try to see who the "he" in question might be and what he's doing to draw attention to himself.

The whole mob shouts abuse and shakes their fists. Someone at Santana's back jostles into her, but she ignores the hit, immediately regaining her balance after a small stumble. Methuselah lets out another loud, baleful bellow from somewhere just beyond the big top, and lightning splits the sky. Santana raises herself up as high as she can, and only then does she see it.

Pierce-blonde moving to the front of the mob.

Except.

It isn't Brittany.

It's Brittany's father.

For an instant, Santana doesn't understand what's happening. She sees Mr. Pierce cutting through a violent tide of shoulders and elbows and hard slaps to his back and ribs. People pelt him as he passes, and he winces but doesn't halt or even pause. Like Puck, he's changed back into his street clothes following the show. He isn't facing Santana, so she can't see his expression, but she can read his posture; it's mean and stubborn, with stiff shoulders and a thrown-out chest.

When he pushes through the front of the mob but keeps going, Santana suddenly knows what he's up to.

He's breaking the strike line.

He's joining himself with Mr. Adams.

Mr. Pierce sidles up right beside his employer and leans over to say something into Mr. Adams' ear. Mr. Adams gives a sharp nod. The two men stand side by side, forming ranks. It occurs to Santana that even Ken is nowhere in sight now. It's just Mr. Adams and Mr. Pierce against the world.

Then, a blow.

The person at Santana's back hits into her again. The force of impact knocks Santana back onto flatfeet and expels all the breath from her. She reels, pain pulsing at her shoulders. It was a bone-on-bone belt, elbow to spine. For an instant, she reels, but then Blaine catches her at the arm, steadying her, and she finds Mr. Adams' voice over the din again.

"—knows where his loyalties rightly ought to lie, I'll have him and his daughter as my guests at the hotel tonight! You ruffians stay here and try to organize your strike, if you like, but I'll tell you now that there's no such thing as a circus union! I'll have anyone loitering on these grounds not doing his work arrested come tomorrow morning at first light! Anyone who destroys my property shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and be made to recompense for damages! I'll remind you that, except for in a few cases, I own all tents and structures in this camp and that the food and provisions in the chuck wagon belong to me, as well! I won't tolerate thievery—or disloyalty! You dumb animals have forced my hand!"

Santana can't breathe. Air never returns to her lungs following the blow. Mr. Pierce and Brittany will spend the night with Mr. Adams at the hotel? Everyone arrested? Mr. Pierce a blackleg? Mr. Adams withholding food? Her thoughts swirl and her stomach swoops.

"If you'll sink my circus, I'll sell it all off for parts!" Mr. Adams threatens. "Mr. Bailey might need new tent canvas when he returns to the States from his European tour! I'll get him the big top, the domiciles, everything! I won't lose it all! I can't!"

It surprises Santana to hear tears in Mr. Adams' voice.

She can no longer see Mr. Adams—just catch his snatches of his words over the dissonance of the crowd. Though Santana doesn't know why, Arthur's face appears in her mind. She sees his sad, pretty eyes and long features. Is Mr. Adams a bad man? She remembers him acting as ringmaster, substituting for Will, the way he smiled under the electric lights, his eyes all but disappearing behind his lifted cheeks.

"Yeah, you go ahead and leave, Adams!" someone shouts, and Santana knows then that Mr. Adams has begun to make his exit from the midway, probably with Mr. Pierce in tow.

Panic grips her.

She tries to run, but something holds her fast at her arm—Blaine.

"Where are you going?" he shouts. "Santana!"

"I have to find Brittany!" she says, frantic.

She expects Blaine to resist her—to tell her that she's being foolish and that Brittany has to go to the hotel with her father now—but he doesn't. He relinquishes the hold on her arm. His mouth hangs open, and there's a vacant look in his eyes. His face still looks ghostly under its paint. He might nod at Santana or he might not. She doesn't know.

She'll probably never see him again.

She bolts.

* * *

><p>Santana goes by instinct rather than reason, pushing her way through the writhing masses until she finally breaks free from the mob. She doesn't pause before sprinting under the billboard partition, bursting through it into an alleyway on the southeast edge of the white city. With a jackknife step, she turns to the north, running in the direction of the family tent row, hair and sashes trailing after her like pennants at her back.<p>

She passes by other company members, people who haven't joined the strike either because they don't know about it yet or haven't any intention to participate in it at all. Snatches of news reach her ears—the gillies have begun to arrive from town. They're expecting an evening fair, a show. What should the circus do about it? How can they perform when half the company has given up on working?

Their problems seem far away to Santana, like a great landmark that had once dominated her view but has since faded into the background, shrinking to a distant point on her horizon. Now Santana has only one care, and that's to reach Brittany. She skitters onto the family tent row, halting hard just outside the Pierce tent.

"Brittany!" she yells, already reaching for the tent flap, propriety be damned.

The door to the tent peels open.

"Santana?" Brittany says, emerging from the darkness, pink-cheeked and with her brow screwed up in confusion.

Santana puts her hands out to stop Brittany from exiting the tent, nudging Brittany back through the door instead. She follows Brittany inside immediately, checking around the instant she steps over the threshold to see if she and Brittany are alone. Her heart beats on hummingbird wings beneath her breast.

Though it's shadowy inside the tent, Santana can still see its interior clearly. It's the first time that Santana has ever been inside the Pierce tent when she had some light to see by, in fact.

She finds the interior space of the tent divided into three sections, with her and Brittany huddled in the main "foyer" and the Pierces' sleeping space located directly behind them. At the back of the tent stands what looks like a very sparse "parlor area," where Mr. Pierce's backboard leans against a corner post and a low wooden stool sits just in front of a lightweight hickory rocking chair like a footstool.

When last Santana visited the Pierce tent under cover of night, a cloth curtain cut the "main room" down the center, dividing Brittany's sleeping space from her father's. Now someone has pulled that curtain back along the A-frame of the tent, making two compartments one. A similar curtain hangs along the horizontal beam that partitions the parlor from the rest of the tent, but it too has been pulled back.

No one occupies either one of the Pierce cots, but Brittany's pillow lies at such an odd angle upon its canvas sling that Santana wonders if Brittany hadn't been asleep on it up until just now. While Mr. Pierce's sleeping area appears spartan and undecorated, Santana notices some mementos upon the overturned vegetable crate where Brittany's toilette set rests—namely, Mr. Remington's newspaper article, folded down so that only the photograph at its center is visible, and the little sprig of trefoil, dried out and divested of almost all its flowers, only the stem remaining.

Both items rest propped against Brittany's washbasin, carefully arranged.

If Santana weren't so scattered, she might almost swoon for Brittany's thoughtfulness. As it is, she knows she hasn't any time to spare. "Your daddy isn't here, is he?" she asks, checking the whole space for a second time, wondering if she somehow might have failed to detect his presence.

Even under the indoor gloom, Santana can see that she has Brittany startled and confused. Brittany reaches out, wrapping her hands around Santana's forearms, linking herself to Santana. She thumbs over Santana's skin.

"No, he's not. Santana, what's wrong? What's going on?" she asks, flustered because Santana is so.

"Britt, he's coming," Santana babbles, grabbing onto Brittany's arms in kind.

Though Santana struggles against it, a sob breaks in her throat. She hasn't ever felt sorrier for anything before in her life than she does about the state of the circus now, not even for all her bad card readings put together. She didn't mean to ruin everything.

She didn't mean it at all.

She doesn't even know where to begin explaining what's going on. She knows that she's frightening Brittany with her strange manner and wild talk, but she can't help but do it. So much has happened since the matinee.

The matinee.

"Brittany, are you all right?" Santana blurts out, suddenly remembering the show and the botched knife throwing act. She searches over Brittany, checking Brittany's body for injuries, even though she knows very well that the blade only tore through Brittany's skirt. "Britt, God, I got blood on your costume. I tried to mend it, but I stuck my finger with the needle. I'm sorry. I just—are you all right?"

Brittany shakes her head, brow still scrunched. "I'm fine," she says. "I did like you said and hid Daddy's medicine, but then he got a really bad headache before the show. He couldn't see straight, and it put off his throwing. After the show, Sam's mama tried to make him lie down, but Daddy said he needed to get new medicine. He went to talk to Mr. Adams about ordering some from a catalogue—"

That's why Mr. Pierce was on the midway.

The new information jogs Santana.

"Britt," she interrupts, "something bad's happened. I talked to Quinn Fabray this morning and what I said upset her. Quinn ran away from the circus, and now Mr. Fabray won't make the deal with Mr. Adams. The company found out, and they've gone on strike—only your daddy, Britt, well, he crossed the line. He stuck with Mr. Adams and now everyone is cross at him. Mr. Adams said that your family could stay at the hotel tonight, so your daddy's coming to get you right now. You can't go, though, because if you do, you won't ever see me again. Puck asked me to marry him—"

"He what?"

"He asked me to marry him for real this time, but I told him no because I don't love him—_Britt, I love you_—and I just couldn't. Now I can't stay at the circus anymore. Mr. Adams will send me away, I'm sure. Once he knows, once they all know—"

Brittany stops Santana with a touch. She moves her hold from Santana's arms, placing one hand on Santana's waist and pulling their hips close together. At the same time, she reaches up with her other hand, tracing her knuckles under Santana's jaw as softly as if Santana were made of porcelain and might break at any instant. Concern lines Brittany's eyes but also _something else_.

"Bless your—," Brittany starts, breathless, but then changes. "You wouldn't marry Puck because of me?" Her voice is all but a squeak. She doesn't sound incredulous, just awed and infinitely grateful, so much so that Santana's heart could probably break for it. Brittany draws a gasping breath. "Thank you," she says, "thank you."

In the next second, Brittany throws her arms around Santana, gathering Santana up in the kind of embrace that overwhelms everything.

Suddenly, all that Santana can see and feel and breathe is Brittany, the windswept-campfire-apple-courage of her, the sweat in her hair, and the aliveness on her skin. Santana clenches her eyes closed, losing herself to the sensation of being home, home, home, in the one place in the world where she has ever truly belonged. Her ribs and Brittany's fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces. She and Brittany breathe against each other in a cycle. Santana can count out the pulse of Brittany's heartbeat against her own skin. She could stay here with Brittany forever in the darkness, if only the world would let it be so.

But time isn't on her side.

"BrittBritt," she breathes, about to say that they can't linger inside the tent, not with Mr. Pierce on his way to fetch Brittany to the hotel.

But Brittany already knows Santana's mind.

"Santana, we have to go," she says, holding Santana closer to her. Her voice is barely above a whisper. She nestles against Santana's neck, her lips pouting and her breath thin, both fearful and brave at once. "We can't stay here, darlin'. Not if they're going to send you away. I couldn't stand it. I have to be where you are."

Two weeks ago, Santana never would have believed that anyone could be so loyal to her. She was nothing—the kind of person who didn't even warrant the truth from her own father. She would never have believed that anyone would want to be with her, let alone that the most wonderful girl in the entire world would choose her over anything, never mind giving up everything for her sake.

A part of her still can't believe it.

But then she can believe it because it's Brittany—Brittany who makes all good things possible for her, her one true and perfect everything.

Santana shifts her hands, crossed at Brittany's back, and feels the thread ring on her finger move against her own skin. She sobs again against Brittany's hair.

"Are you sure?" she asks, hating the brokenness in her own voice but knowing that she must ask if she wants to be fair to Brittany. "What about your father, Britt, and Sam and everyone? If you leave with me, we can't come back. You could never go home."

Brittany draws one last thin breath against Santana's skin, and then all the fearfulness seems to go out of her at once, as if someone had extinguished it like a candle. When next she breathes, she does so surely. There are tears in her voice but not one modicum of doubt.

"I'm home wherever I am when I'm with you," she says.

(It's a resolution, a promise, and a thousand other things.)

Santana gives another sob, this one soundless and sharp, as she pulls Brittany closer to her. Oh what did she ever do to win Brittany Pierce's heart? How could a bad omen be so lucky as to have something priceless, to be the keeper of something as sweet and unfailing as this?

"I have fifty dollars," she chokes out, coming upon the thought suddenly, like one might happen upon an unexpected piece of furniture in a dark, unfamiliar room. "An old man gave it to me as a tip on the midway the other day at the fair. I'd thought I was going to give it to Puck, to pay him back for getting me to the circus. I'd forgotten about it until now, but, Britt, w-we can take it—you and I. We can use it to go somewhere—somewhere safe, somewhere where it's just us."

To her surprise, Brittany laughs. "You forgot you had fifty dollars?" she asks through her tears, chuckling. "Santana, you're rich."

Both girls laugh, though nothing is actually funny.

"Well," Santana says.

Brittany gives Santana a squeeze. She swallows hard enough for Santana to feel it, and then speaks more seriously. "Let's grab up some things here," she says, "and we can go to your tent. We could probably still catch an evening train. We could buy tickets."

She starts to pull away from Santana, drawing a hand to her own face to wipe her eyes and nose. Her cheeks appear pinked and wet muddles her starlit blue; Santana imagines that she herself looks much the same. Both girls laugh again, nervous. Brittany is about to extricate herself fully from Santana's embrace when Santana stops her.

"Where will we go, BrittBritt?" Santana asks, her question impossibly small, even though she and Brittany are alone together.

When Puck proposed to Santana, he said that Kenyon, Minnesota was one of the few places that would allow for someone like him to be with someone like her, but as far as Santana knows, there are no places that will allow for someone like her to be with someone like Brittany, not unless Brittany took a husband and Santana was their housekeeper or the nanny to their children, and even then it would be different.

For a second, Santana tries to imagine that kind of life, wondering if she could abide it. She loves Brittany enough that she would do anything just to be close to her, even if it hurt.

Brittany meets her eyes. "There are other circuses," she says, almost as if she knows what's happening in Santana's mind. Then, "Darlin', you're shaking."

Without another word, Brittany cups Santana's jaw in her hand and tilts Santana's face up, meeting her in a kiss. She catches Santana's top lip first, nods to shift to the bottom, and then nods again, capturing both lips at once. Santana immediately sighs into the touch, sinking into it and feeling anchored perhaps for the first time all day.

Briefly, she just allows Brittany to kiss her, too wound up and stupid to even kiss Brittany back, but then Brittany teases Santana's lip with her teeth, coaxing Santana into the motion. Santana's hands slide down Brittany's back, linking around Brittany's waist. Brittany kisses her with conviction, with more promises and trust. Santana feels that Brittany needs her as much as she needs Brittany. Both girls cling to each other, kissing sloppily, deeply, and honestly, again and again and again.

Slowly, Santana's body starts to loosen. Whatever tremor was in her dispels with each new kiss until finally it's gone.

"I love you," she mumbles against Brittany's mouth.

"I love you," Brittany echoes against hers, slipping her tongue past Santana's lips.

Santana's breath hitches and she closes her eyes tighter, trusting Brittany completely to guide her. They're going to run away together. They're going to find a place.

Canvas shushes against canvas, and the light behind Santana's eyelids changes all at once.

"Baby girl, come on! Grab your things! Let's—"

Mr. Pierce's desiccated voice dies away the instant he steps inside the tent.

(Whatever time Santana and Brittany had has just run out.)

* * *

><p>Lightning flares outside the tent, illuminating the scene. Before the flash even fades from the sky, Santana and Brittany have sprung away from each other, but it's already too late.<p>

Mr. Pierce has seen them.

"Britt—?" Mr. Pierce splutters, his jaw slack and his brow tightly furrowed, as if he were in pain.

He gapes, looking between Santana and his daughter as if he doesn't recognize either one of them, and stands directly in the front of the tent door, his hand still holding back the flap. In a way, he seems strangely boyish, like a child who's just witnessed something that exceeds his ability to understand. He also seems almost more hurt than shocked, like he had never expected that Brittany could keep a secret from him—and especially not a secret like this one.

_Oh God._

"Daddy," Brittany says, all the color draining from her face and her eyes turning wide. "Daddy, it's okay. Santana and I—"

She reaches out for Santana, but her father forestalls her. Before Brittany can fully move, Mr. Pierce darts forward with all the speed and precision of a striking viper, snatching up her arm and yanking her, hard, toward him.

In that single instant, Santana sees in him a younger knife thrower—one with finer reflexes and more grace and agility than he has now. She also sees a father protecting his daughter from something he must fully believe is dangerous to her. Mixed in with her shock, Santana feels a pang.

Mr. Pierce jerks Brittany around to face him, his right hand ringing her left arm, tethering her to him. He half-snarls and half-despairs, "What're you doing with that nigger girl? What she done to you?" He looks crazed, his eyes flame blue and wider than Santana has ever seen them. He gives Brittany a shake, as if to start her speaking.

Brittany winces, both at her father's words and the tightness of his grip. She recoils, pulling away, though she has nowhere to go. Her father holds her fast.

Santana's heart beats in her mouth. She almost tastes the iron in her pulse. The whole tent burns as if with fire heat. Santana looks frantically between Mr. Pierce and Brittany. What should she do? She scrambles to find some excuse. It was her fault—she was the one to kiss Brittany! She rapidly feels herself coming up against that wall inside of her, shutting down.

_Oh God, not now._

"She didn't do anything!" Brittany objects. "Daddy, I love her! I'm in love with her, and—"

Something breaks in Mr. Pierce.

His expression turns from one of confusion to one of rage.

No, wait—to one of fear.

Of hate.

His grip tightens on Brittany's arm, clamped down so hard that Brittany cringes. Vivid red and pain-white outline his fingers on her skin. He starts to give Brittany another jerk, pulling her in closer to him.

Seeing him, Santana expects to halt in place—to be helpless to do anything for Brittany like she was in Storm Lake when she and Brittany were at the mercy of the ruffians, or earlier today when she watched Mr. Pierce botch the knife throwing act, one lob at a time. Santana is never brave enough, not when she needs to be, not when it counts.

The rules say she can't do anything anyhow.

But then.

She sees fear bright in Brittany's eyes, a different shade of blue than has ever been there before. She thinks back to the night when Brittany's father boxed Brittany's ear, how Brittany must have looked then in that moment just precisely like she looks now, like she doesn't know the extent of the damage that her father might do to her in his frenzy.

(Back then, Santana had made a promise herself. To Brittany.)

"Don't hurt her!" Santana shouts.

She takes a step forward, not knowing what she intends to do beyond stopping Mr. Pierce from harming Brittany in whatever way she can. She is fearless and bigger than just herself, like something inside of her has risen up to take the charge. If Mr. Pierce raises one hand to Brittany, Santana swears to every devil, she'll—

Motion.

Mr. Pierce's hand flies.

It happens in an instant.

The back of Mr. Pierce's fist connects hard with Santana's jaw. He cuffs her across the face. She sees a burst of white and both blunt and sharp pain flare against her mouth at once—the blow itself and then Mr. Pierce's wedding band, cutting like a blade into her skin.

Instantly, she falls, torqued to one side, her head driven down, the rest of her body following in a heap.

She yelps and closes her eyes just as something smacks solid against the right side of her skull—a tent pole. It rattles her teeth in her jaw. She sees more white.

Stars.

Her hands and wrists and hip bite ground, her knee impelled into the dirt.

The same wooziness that sometimes grips her when she stands too quickly after lying down to read for a long while swallows her up, and she sinks into it as if it were a pool.

Black.

Blank.

Everything in lurch.

Somewhere, she loses seconds. She's thoughtless and then swimming, fighting to surmount the dark, heavy squall that threatens to burst before her eyes. It's like emerging from underwater through waves, misjudging the break at first. Black then moonlight, black then free.

When she can see again, spots of white surround her. Her ears ring, and pain throbs in so many places on her body that she can't fully realize them all. She kneels on fours on the grass.

"Stay the hell away from my daughter!" she hears.

More motion.

Feet move away from her. Mr. Pierce drags Brittany out the door. Santana reaches out, dizzy, stupid, and too slow. Brittany jerks against Mr. Pierce's hold, struggling against him. But Mr. Pierce is too strong. "

Let me go!" Brittany yells. "Let me go! Let me go!"

She beats at her father with her free hand.

Another wave of black threatens to swallow Santana.

"Santana!" Brittany screams.

And then Mr. Pierce has Brittany out the door.

Santana scrambles, sussing out her limbs, which are feet and which are hands. When she raises her head, black and white pulse around her head in fireworks and dying stars. She nearly swoons in forcing herself onto her knees and then her feet, grabbing at the tent pole at her back for her support only to realize that it came loose from its rut when her head hit it. Now the pole rests at a strange angle, no longer dug into the earth but rested against the tent canvas at a slant. It wobbles at Santana's touch, so she ignores it, righting herself on her own power.

"Brittany!" she screams, head and heart pounding together. "Brittany!"—as if her shouting would be enough to bring Brittany back inside the tent or to free Brittany from Mr. Pierce's grip.

Santana stumbles drunkenly out the front of the tent. It's turned darker outdoors. Thunder rolls.

Brittany and her father are gone.

* * *

><p>At first, Santana can't see or hear anything clearly. Something blurs across her vision, and her ears ring as if with the needling drone of insect wings in flight. There's wet on her face. Her body disagrees with her, not wanting to be upright and moving, but her heart runs fast ahead.<p>

"Brittany!" she calls out again, but no one answers her. Her voice is between a scream and a sob. "Brittany!"

Setting one foot before the other is as difficult a task as any Santana has ever faced in her life; the ground is strangely far away and wobbly beneath her. Something trembles deep inside Santana like a struck cymbal, shaky, displaced, and uncertain. She looks to the left and sees nothing. She looks to the right and sees two shadows, persons.

"Brittany!"

The shadow persons run toward her. One doffs his hat, the other holds up her skirts around her ankles. They touch Santana on the shoulders and at the elbows when they reach her.

"Ms. Santana!"

"Santana, what happened? Your face!"

"We heard shouting."

The people are Sam and Rachel, come from somewhere between their two adjacent tents. Santana focuses in on their faces, blinking until she can make out their features. They're stricken and wide-eyed. Rachel won't stop gaping at something around Santana's mouth. Sam checks over Santana's shoulder, once, twice, and then three times, like something wicked might follow on her heels out of the Pierce tent into the night.

"Son, what's going on?" calls another voice, some distance off.

"It's nothing, Pop! Go back inside! Keep packing up!" Sam lies to his father.

Thunder almost drowns out his words, but Mr. Evans still seems to heed Sam's direction. Normally, Santana would care very much about who was near and who might hear her, but she hasn't any time to lose, not with Mr. Pierce already taking Brittany away. She latches onto Sam's arms, fully hysterical.

"Sam," she cries, "Mr. Pierce saw me and Brittany kissing! He knows, Sam! He knows!"

It's all the more she has to explain.

For the second time in two weeks, Sam Evans looks like a man who just took a gunshot. He turns pale and haunted in an instant, stilling where Santana holds him. His shock cedes immediately to fear, and his eyes dart to Rachel, checking her reaction to Santana's news. For a half-second, Santana looks along with him, expecting to find at least the usual judgment written into Rachel's expression, if not disgust or worse.

(Hate.)

Maybe Brittany Pierce isn't the only person at the circus who gets to surprise Santana, though.

Rachel presses one hand to her own throat, as if trying to find a lost breath. Her mouth falls open into a short _o_ and she forgets to blink. Though Rachel seems confused, she also seems anxious and heartsick—and not on her own behalf but on behalf of her friend.

"Oh, Santana, no," she says, breathless, taking firmer hold of Santana's sleeve with her free hand, as if to bear Santana up.

Though Rachel might deserve more explanation, Santana can't pause to tell Rachel anything more than what she has already said. Her heart pounds out murder upon her breastbone. Mr. Pierce knows that she and Brittany are in love.

"He'll hurt her!" she sobs, her throat so hot and tight that she can barely choke out the words. The blur across her eyes worsens, so that she almost can't see Sam and Rachel's faces anymore. "He'll hurt her because of me! We have to go!"

While Rachel still seems stunned, Sam doesn't miss a beat. "Are they going to the hotel?" he asks, remembering what Mr. Adams said on the midway.

Santana nods and tugs on him. "We have to go!" she repeats, frantic. Her skull feels like it might split down the middle. Every time it throbs, her vision blurs anew.

"Everyone's gathering on the other side of town," Rachel says, suddenly animate and useful again. Her expression is most queer. "No one wants to be here when the police turn up come morning. My papa and baba are hitching up a wagon. If we wait for them—"

"No!" Santana shouts. "No! We can't wait! We have to go! Mr. Pierce, he'll hurt Brittany because of me!"

"Maybe someone's got a cart hitched up already in the bay," Sam says.

He wears a tight expression, lips pursed as if he's sucking a hard candy in his mouth. Even through her tears, Santana can see him thinking. What will he, Rachel, and Santana do if they actually manage to catch up to Brittany and Mr. Pierce? Mr. Pierce won't simply relinquish Brittany into their custody because they ask him to do it. Will they have to break Brittany out of the hotel? Will Sam have to fight Mr. Pierce?

Santana can't wait for him to deliberate. She starts off in the direction of the wagon bay, never mind if Sam and Rachel will follow her or not.

Except.

They do.

"Santana!" Rachel shouts, running to keep up with Santana and Sam's strides, so much longer than her own. "Santana! Wait! If there isn't a wagon already hitched up to a team in the bay, you'll just waste more time! It would be better to wait and—!"

Rachel doesn't have the chance to finish stating her objections.

Just as Santana, Sam, and Rachel cross onto the main east-west avenue that divides the upper camp from the lower, someone else appears.

Three someones, rather.

Three someones in a wagon, already hitched to two circus horses and outfitted for a ride.

"Do you need a lift somewhere?" asks the male Dragon Chang in perfect, unaccented English. He gives the reins in his hands a little jig and wears an imploring expression, his brow scrunched and his lips pursed.

"We could make a stop for you," the older female Dragon Chang, his wife, asks, offering up a timid smile. When Santana and her companions don't respond right away, the woman's face falls, and she turns more somber. "The gilly police are coming," she explains, "and we don't intend to be here when they arrive. We're doing what's wise and leaving now. You're welcome to come with us."

The youngest Dragon Chang sits in the wagon bed in silence. She leans against a heap of luggage, arms folded across her breast. Though Santana can't be certain, she thinks that the girl might be crying. Every few seconds, the girl's shoulders quake. The girl neither looks up at Santana, Rachel, and Sam, nor acknowledges their presence at all.

All three acrobats wear their street clothes, of the same kind one might see people wearing along the sidewalks of New York.

"I'll be damned," Sam says, crushing his hat in his hands. "Son-of-a-gun!"

Santana knows his feeling.

Though this most recent turn of events shouldn't shock her—not when everything that has happened today has come as a shock, some even more awful than others—she still can't help but gape, her thoughts slow to process.

The Flying Dragon Changs speak English? And they have a wagon, ready to go to town? And they're willing to give her and her companions a ride? And they turned up just at the right instant? And they speak English? Does that mean that they understood everything that Brittany and Santana said to them yesterday while they were having tea?

Holy Jesus.

Thunder cracks overhead, and, when it does, it seems to jolt everyone back into motion.

"Yes, yes," Rachel says vaguely, looking as if a very bright camera had just flashed before her eyes. She grabs hold of the wagon, preparing herself to board it. "We can go fetch Brittany," she determines, "and then regroup with everyone else back here—"

"Brittany and I can't come back," Santana interjects.

When Rachel whips around to face Santana, confusion and concern bright in her eyes, Santana feels a pang. A fresh sob breaks over her.

"We can't come back," she repeats, feeling the bitterness of her and Brittany's circumstances for the first time, "not now that everyone knows. Puck won't have me anymore, and Brittany's father, he—! No one will let us b-b—!"

More lightning flashes.

Her shoulders wrack and she covers her mouth with one hand. She can't keep from shaking.

"I can't believe this is happening," she keens.

She can't say anything more than that, mainly because she knows nothing beyond that simple point of fact: that she and Brittany must run. To where, with what, and how, she can't be sure. She only has to get to Brittany first, to save her. Won't Sam and Rachel see?

Santana fully expects her friends to protest her decision, to tell her that it's dramatic and foolhardy, to object to her taking Brittany away from the place where she grew up with them.

After all, Sam didn't want Ma Jones to leave the circus earlier today and fought against her going most vehemently, though he had almost no grounds on which to do so, and Rachel never approved of Santana and Brittany spending so much time together anyway.

Neither Sam nor Rachel knows anything but the circus nor trusts the world beyond the white city.

Why would either one of them like the idea of Brittany and Santana running off together into some great unknown?

Even the Flying Dragon Changs probably disapprove of Santana's intentions.

Rules are rules are rules after all.

But.

"Then you've gotta be ready to go," Sam says simply, setting his hand on Santana's shoulder. "You go get your things, whatever you and Brittany need. The Changs and Rachel and I"—he checks for confirmation from Rachel and their drivers, continuing once he receives it—"will go grab some stuff to help us out when we get to the hotel. We'll get a blanket to cover up this wagon bed in case we need to sneak you and Britt out of town, some rope, maybe, for if we need it. You meet us down by the wagon bay in ten minutes. Be ready to go."

When Rachel speaks to Santana, her eyes are very sad—circus-lonely even—but her voice is soft and generous. "My father has a map of the Midwest in our tent," she says. "I could fetch it for you, if you like, Santana."

Had they any time to spare, Santana might throw her arms around Sam and Rachel and sob onto their shoulders for gratitude. She might tell them how much it means to her not only that they give a damn but that they don't hate her and haven't judged her at all. It should be impossible for Santana and Brittany to love each other in the way that they do, but Sam and Rachel don't seem to mind. They aren't fussed at all. Santana wants them to know that she won't ever forget them, no matter what happens after this, even if she has to go away into exile to the very ends of the earth. She licks her lips and tastes salt. Her throat tightens.

Sam Evans is the best boy she knows and Rachel Berry the most surprisingly kind girl.

"Thank you," she whispers, wishing that she could perhaps find better words to explain what she means.

But maybe there aren't better words after all.

Santana turns to the Dragon Changs perched on their wagon and nods to them, too. "Thank you," she says.

The man offers her a gentle smile and then looks to his wife in the seat beside him, sharing a knowing look with her. The younger girl in the back of the wagon sniffles, and another crack of thunder bursts over the prairie. The wind picks up.

Briefly, Santana feels like she did on her final day at the bachelor cottage, like someone has stolen the very ground out from beneath her feet, like she's stuck in freefall without knowing where she'll land. She reels.

People are supposed to run away to join the circus, not run away from the circus once they've joined it.

What business does a little yeller girl like her have taking flight with Brittany Pierce?

But then she remembers the fear in Brittany's eyes as Mr. Pierce dragged Brittany away from their tent. She remembers the promise that she made to Brittany and the unbreakable trust she feels whenever Brittany holds her. The invisible string around her heart gives its strongest tug yet in the direction of downtown Kenyon.

Santana Lopez takes off at a run.

* * *

><p>No one tries to stop her on her way to her tent, but even so, Santana feels beset on every side. She trembles violently, like something has rung a bell deep inside her, the bell reverberating without end.<p>

What if she can't rescue Brittany from the hotel? What if she makes things worse by trying? Even if she and Brittany succeed in escaping from Brittany's father, the circus, and Kenyon, where will they go? Is there any place in the world where she and Brittany can find peace?

(Lucky things aren't supposed to love bad omens.)

The thought of Brittany scared or hurt, holed up in some gilly hotel with her father screaming vitriol at her for falling in love with a nigger gypsy—Santana feels sick for it down to her guts. Her ribs wrack, and she sobs again, tears so hot upon her face that they almost burn. Her skull throbs with more pain, and she sees white.

Oh please, just let Brittany be okay.

Santana will give anything to anyone to make it so.

Please just don't let Brittany be hurt because of her.

She never wanted to cause Brittany any trouble. She never meant to break so many delicate things. She'll do anything to keep Brittany safe, if only she has the chance to do so.

She halts just outside her own tent.

"Puck?" she calls, praying to her shoulder-devil that he doesn't answer.

Methuselah lets out another bellow as lightning flashes in the distance, but Santana hears nothing from inside the tent.

She counts out one, two, three, four, five with no response and cautiously peels back the flap. In the brief instant before her eyes adjust to the lowlight, she fears what she might see. What if Puck has already taken their things? Ransacked her valise? Kicked everything in? Made chaos for her? Stolen the fifty dollars? She hears her own breath, wet and ragged against the darkness. Soon, she sees shadows, then shapes, and then details.

The interior of the tent is precisely how it should be, everything neat in its place.

"Oh, thank you," Santana gasps, clutching a hand to her heart, not precisely sure to whom she speaks, if to anyone at all.

She enters into the tent, head still throbbing and thoughts still swirling, cheeks and eyes swollen from so many hard tears, and hitches her skirts up to just below her knee, cutting around the cot and stooping down at the back of the tent, right beside her and Puck's luggage.

Immediately, as she sits down, a wave of dizziness subsumes her. For an instant, the air seems too thin, like there isn't enough of it.

Santana stills.

Recovers herself.

Her skull gives another splitting throb.

Though it proves difficult to do so while crying and shaking, she tries to think through her mental inventory, arranging herself on the grass and beginning to rifle through her valise. She needs the fifty dollar note, of course, but it also might not hurt anything for her to take her other belongings, as well—her spare clothes, hairbrush, shoes, hat, and hidden treasures.

Maybe she should just bring along her whole valise.

She thrusts her hand into the toe of her shoe, checking for the hidden note. Her fingers find two types of paper, one worn and cottony and one sleek and layered. The first is the note, the second Mr. Berry's folded newspaper with the purple coneflower pressed between its pages.

The note is right where Santana left it.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Santana sets her valise on the three-legged stool at her side. She pauses, considering. Though it would have horrified her to do so two weeks ago, now Santana can't help but wonder if Puck has anything that it would be worth her time to steal.

While the moral part of Santana would hate to rob Puck—and especially after already breaking his heart today—the part of her that just wants to survive and to care for Brittany knows that she must afford herself every resource if she and Brittany are going to make it outside the circus.

Even with some money to their names, who knows where they'll have to go or what they'll have to do, traveling on their own?

With ginger, tremulous hands, she reaches for Puck's rucksack, starting to untie the knot.

Only.

In her shakiness, Santana's elbow knocks into something at her side—her valise where she just set it down on the stool—sending it sprawling onto the ground. With its top not yet refastened, some of the valise's contents spill out onto the grass. Santana jumps at the noise, her heart in her throat, and spins to survey the damage.

Her nightdress fans out under the valise, along with some other object.

Objects.

Tarot cards.

Something pricks inside of Santana as if stuck with a needle.

She stiffens where she sits.

For a second, Santana daren't to look at the cards, but then lightning flashes again, illuminating the interior of the tent through the canvas, and suddenly she can't stand not to look. She finds that the cards have fallen out facedown, descending like rubble from an avalanche down the slope of a mountain from the inside of the valise. They're from her new deck, the Dotti that arrived from Ontario yesterday. Her insides flutter.

Immediately, the strange humor starts to possess her, even without her having touched the cards at all.

She knows that she oughtn't to look—that there isn't time, for one thing, and that she almost certainly won't like what she sees if she does look, for another—but she finds that she can't help herself.

It's like when she was a little girl, snooping through her father's surgeon's bag; the rules said that she shouldn't pry into his private things, but she so wanted to know him better.

She almost ached for it.

After years of only having Papa with her in the evenings and on the weekends, he was still mostly a beautiful stranger to her, like a person with whom she had ridden along a common streetcar route to and from work every day for years but to whom she had never spoken anything more than a "Good day" here and a "How do you do?" in passing.

She remembers peeling up the sterling silver case tucked into his bag's side pocket and opening it to find the unlabeled photograph of the pretty, dark woman, who was sad and young but with certain features and a countenance that Santana almost knew.

(Another somehow-familiar stranger.)

Though she hated herself for it, that photograph obsessed Santana, and she dug it out whenever Papa left his bag unattended at the door, staring at it, running her fingers over the frame, over the lines, until it almost made her sick from guilt and curiosity and longing just to look.

Eventually, she couldn't stand it. Always seeing something she could never have only through glass put too much pain into her heart. She stopped looking at the photograph for fear of forever being denied the thing she wanted most of all.

It was easiest not to hope.

Now, Santana quakes, her arms and hands and jaw chattering as if it were suddenly the bitterest winter month, despite the dry, stale heat inside the tent.

In such a world where a father can hate and misunderstand his own daughter for something as simple and perfect as love, can there ever really be a place for Santana and Brittany together? She remembers the fear and rage in Mr. Pierce's eyes. The pain in them. Can she and Brittany ever truly be happy and safe somewhere? Is there anyplace in the world for them?

Santana has never wanted anything more than that. All the lies, secrets, disappointments, and loneliness would be worth it if she could just have Brittany with her always, loving and being loved by her. Santana has never been able to believe in good things for herself. It's always been so difficult for her to hold her hope.

But with Brittany, anything seems possible.

Everything does, even.

Brittany is the exception to every rule Santana has ever known. Brittany looked across a crowded space and found Santana, though Santana was a stranger to her. She loved Santana fearlessly at first and then bravely later. Never once has she believed that Santana has a curse, even when Santana herself can't believe anything but that. When everyone else Santana has ever loved before has left Santana and gone away, Brittany promised that she would never abandon Santana or give her up, and Brittany has stuck to her word with perfect integrity.

"Please," Santana whispers, more tears welling behind her eyes.

_Cards are only cards._

_We all make our own ways in life._

Santana's grandmother swore with reverence that the cards didn't lie—that they would tell secrets to those who possessed the gift—and though Santana despairs of it, the cards have so far always told her true.

Though no man or woman on earth could say what the end of this day will bring for Santana and Brittany, the cards could say it. The cards would know. Either Brittany is right, and she and Santana can make their own fate, or else Santana's curse is too strong, and there will never be anything for her and Brittany but ruin and Death and an end.

Santana has to know.

She can't drag Brittany along with her into the darkness without knowing.

In the next second, Santana reaches out as if she were compelled to do it, gathering up her valise and searching inside its depths for something, something until finally she discovers what it is that she seeks concealed in the toe of her shoe: her first tarot deck, still hidden away, right where Brittany had told her to put it.

Pretty French designs sing up from the card faces in blues and reds and gemstone greens. The more Santana looks upon them, the more a languor overtakes her: her strange humor, darker and deeper than it has ever been before. Santana moves the deck into her lap. Her fingers smooth over the colors and shapes. She sets the valise aside.

She draws a breath, and, with trembling hands, she reads.

* * *

><p>The deck on the ground is for Brittany, the one in her lap for herself. Santana doesn't bother to shuffle or split either set; she simply reads the cards as she finds them, let fate tell her whatever it will.<p>

For Brittany, she flips the Fool.

For herself, she draws the High Priestess.

They're the first and last safe cards she'll lay; all others carry a risk.

Though she knows she's alone, Santana whispers the reading aloud, "These cards represent us, Britt." She reaches for another card upon the grass from Brittany's deck. "And these represent our selves, who we are and what we've asked."

She turns three cards in a row for Brittany: the Lovers, the High Priestess, and Temperance, a blonde-haired angel straining water from a stream. She lays three cards in a row for herself, drawing from the deck on her lap: the Lovers, the Fool, and the Devil, with his evil attention to detail.

It doesn't occur to her until after she has already done it that she has set Brittany's cards upside-down and her own right side-up. The one spread sits just above the other and to the side, like two same-colored squares in a checkered pattern.

That Brittany should be part of her and she a part of Brittany should perhaps surprise Santana, but it doesn't.

With shuddering breath, Santana turns the next rows. "This is what surrounds us," she says, turning three more cards for Brittany—the Hanged Man, Fortune's Wheel, and the World—and for herself—Judgment, Fortune's Wheel, and the Hermit.

When she had first begun this reading, a part of Santana had hoped that it would come to naught and that the cards would prove nonsensical, failing to match up. But now she sees them splay in mirror, familiar faces peeking up from along their edges, old haunts mapped out upon them in perfect geography, her and Brittany in compliment, always reaching for each other.

Is that a clown with his smile overturned? A ragged man, hidden away in the dark of his tent? The big top in its white and blue round?

(It strikes Santana—even spelled out in cards—that Brittany always thinks better of her than she thinks of herself.)

"What's in our dreams," she says, finding the Empress surrounded by Swords for Brittany and the Emperor surrounded by Swords for herself.

So many blades, so much trouble.

A fresh sob breaks over Santana and more tears blur her vision. She thinks of Mr. Pierce's bandolier, replete with knives. Her skull throbs. She almost can't see the cards through her own wet eyes and the shadows in the tent. "Oh God, Britt," she keens, wiping furiously at her face with an open hand.

She should stop the reading now, but she can't, not with the strange humor inducing her to go on, not with all of her grandmother's old hissings echoing in her ears. Her hands move almost of their own accord, though they tremble.

"What already is, as we know," she chokes, scrabbling to pick up and flip Brittany's next three cards and then her own. Her thumb leaves a print of something upon the cards, but she can't tell what it is, not through her own tears and the gathering darkness. It's hard enough just to see the cards for what they are.

For Brittany: Judgment; the Heirophant, poised between heaven and earth; and the Hermit again.

For herself: the Hanged Man, the Heirophant, and the Empress.

Do these figures pass between Brittany and Santana's spreads? Do they walk right out of Brittany's circus and into Santana's, as if it were all one?

The elephants wail outside the tent, or maybe the lions roar; Santana can't tell anymore. The thunder has become too raucous and overwhelming.

"Our hidden things, even to us," she says, reaching for the cards spilled farthest from her for Brittany and producing the Devil, the Eight of Swords, and the Emperor, and then finding the Magician, the World, and Temperance for herself.

The more evil she discovers lurking in the cards—around every corner of the circus—the faster her heart beats. It won't matter, none of it will matter, as long as Santana doesn't draw the one card she hates more than anything. Let disasters come if they will, let there be secrets and lies. She and Brittany will face it all.

Just not Death.

"Please, please, please," Santana whispers, tears dripping from her cheeks to the blades of grass around her skirts, to the cards in their harlequin colors. "Please, Britt."

Thunder busts overhead and Santana lays down the future. For Brittany, she sets the first card and immediately shrieks, clamping a hand over her mouth: the Ten of Swords—a body laid out under a blackened sky, ten blades stuck into the back. She lays the next card: the Tower, struck by lightning and in flames. And the next: the Three of Swords, with three blades pierced through a beating heart.

"Oh Jesus!" she sobs, rocking back and forth where she sits. Now she has to know, as if it were the ending to the most important book she might ever read. She turns her own cards: the Ten, Eight, and Queen of Swords, all blades and entrapment, all danger. "I'm sorry!" she cries, almost gagging on her tears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Santana would give up the reading right then, but she knows that doing so would profit her nothing.

Whatever will be, will be, whether she sees it or not.

_La Muerte viene para todos._

It's as if some spell enchants her, binding her to the cards, to the story that they weave. She must know the ending, even if there's nothing she can do to alter or allay it. Dark, kinetic energy moves her hand for the final turns.

_I love you, Britt_, she thinks, unable to speak aloud anymore.

She lays two cards for Brittany and then two cards for herself, joining their spreads together at the corner with the final card shared between them: the Magician and the Sun, the Sun and the Tower. Her heart won't even dare to beat. Maybe, maybe—

She believes in one good thing.

Then.

Lightning flashes, illuminating the tent.

She sees the thumb stain on the edge of the card, shared between both spreads.

Blood.

She sees the card itself.

Death.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: All the thanks to my diligent, talented, attentive beta Dr. Ruth. She is wonderful in so many ways and elevates my writing to levels I could not achieve on my own. Working with her is such a pleasure. Also, my gratitude to Han, Lu, and Sadie for their continued support. I dedicate this chapter to the lovely and talented Virginia of brittanart, who has very much enhanced my writing experience through her art.<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Spanish translations:<strong>

_**Niñas que a vender flores vais a Granada,  
><strong>__**no paséis por la sierra de la Alpujarra  
><strong>__**Hay un bandido que  
><strong>__**con todas las niñas  
><strong>__**tiene partido—**_

_**are lyrics from the bolero of Spanish composer Francisco Asenjo Barbieri's 1854 zarzuela opera Los Diamantes de la Corona. The lyrics say:**_

_**You girls that go to sell flowers to Granada,  
><strong>__**do not come over the Alpujarra mountains  
><strong>__**There is a bandit there who  
><strong>__**with every girl  
><strong>__**has a game—**_

_**Oh Dios de los cielos y San José y San Mateo y todos los ángeles : Oh God of Heaven and St. Joseph and St. Matthew and all the angels**_

_**La Muerte viene para todos : Death comes for us all**_


	17. Death

**Note: This chapter contains intense situations and potentially triggering material. If you need to know the nature of the trigger, please PM me and I can tell you what it is, no questions asked.**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has made this journey possible: To my flawless beta Han, who has put hours into helping me craft this story and elevate my work, even when she herself was extraordinarily busy and had projects of her own. To my flawless beta Dr. Ruth, whose expertise, careful attention to detail, and love for the written word are valuable beyond measure, and whose time and efforts I appreciate so very much. If these last few chapters sing at all, it's because of her. To my translator Lu, whose promptness and generosity have benefited this story so much. To my best cheerleader Sadie, whose enthusiasm and responsiveness helps me along in ways I can't even quantify.<strong>

**And, of course, to all of you, for coming away with me to the circus.**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 15: Death<strong>

**Friday, July 8th, 1898: Kenyon, Minnesota**

At first, Santana feels nothing. Then, only a dull ringing inside—like the metallic drone of a pewter goblet dropped from a great height onto a stone floor. The card lays right-side up, which makes it Santana's, but it's also a Dotti, which makes it Brittany's.

Santana would almost want to laugh, except.

The invisible knife in her belly gives a sharp wrench and she winces. Why had she thought that reading the cards would help her with anything? Why had she thought that she wouldn't draw Death? That she could escape her curse? Now she doesn't even know to whom the card belongs. Is it to her? To Brittany? To both of them?

The strange, dark humor flees Santana all at once. Suddenly, she feels much smaller than she did before and afraid. Alone. She imagines Brittany locked behind a closed door in a hotel room, Mr. Pierce raising his fists to her, his blades, trying to pummel or cut away whatever it is in Brittany that has caused her to defy him, to turn herself to—

"Santana!"

She jolts at the sound of her name, realizing, to her distress, that more than ten minutes have elapsed since she parted from her friends. Sam has come looking for her, calling for her on his way down the tent row.

Her first impulse is to cover the cards, to hide the terrible thing she's done from him like a child who has broken an heirloom teacup while her mother stepped out of the parlor for just a moment. But then she realizes that hiding the cards won't do anything to change them.

_No se puede eludir la Muerte._

Something turns to flint in Santana's belly.

"No," she whispers, setting a hand over the Death card.

Before she arrived at the circus, Santana couldn't believe in any good things. She had drawn the Death card for three people, and they had all died. Her own grandmother had called her goddamned, a shame, and a bad omen. Her own father had lied to her about everything from his name to her birth to why she had had to spend her childhood so lonely, locked up in his second home, starved of his company.

On the last day before she had left the bachelor cottage with Puck, Santana had wondered if maybe it wouldn't just be best for her to read tarot for herself—to try out her curse and see if the Death card might perhaps show its face for her.

Things might have just been easiest for everyone that way.

But then Santana couldn't do it.

Even after watching Abuela die, laid up in bed for weeks, in agony and screaming, Santana hadn't understood death. Her mother had died when she was young, but she had no memories of either her mother or her mother's passing on which to reflect. Death seemed like some distant, nebulous notion to her, not something tangible and real.

It had something to do with the sour smell that lingered in Abuela's room for a month even after the coroners had taken Abuela's body away. It had something to do with silence, with never talking about the person who was dead after the person died again, almost as if he or she had never existed at all. It had something to do with loneliness, and maybe that was it.

Death seemed like an endless loneliness to Santana, so she couldn't bring herself to face it.

She had been too afraid, already too lonely.

Now Santana isn't afraid, though.

And she isn't lonely anymore.

For once, she feels brave, and she has her someone.

Brittany Pierce is the exception to every rule Santana has ever known, and maybe Santana can't believe in good things for herself, but she can believe in them for Brittany.

She must.

Let Death come for Santana if it will, but Santana won't allow it to come for Brittany, not while she still has breath in her lungs to fight against it. If there is any one person who could beat out Santana's curse, that person is Brittany Pierce, who has never once given a damn about the rules and who believes so ceaselessly in the goodness of the world.

"Santana! Where are you? We have to go!" Sam yells, coming up along Santana's tent.

Santana stands, fumbling. Her skull throbs again, threatening to split clean down the middle. Her vision blurs with a pulse of white, and she ambles on her feet. Before she even fully has her balance, she forces her way out of the tent, thumping into the cot and overturned vegetable crate as she goes. She pushes through the tent flaps. More white and another throb.

"Sam!" she shouts, all but falling into his arms.

Even through her blurred vision, Santana sees that the sky has grown darker outside, though whether this new darkness is due to the storm or the setting of the sun behind the clouds, she can't say. Twilight obscures the air, painting everything in grays and blacks. Sam's face is in shadow, but his eyes are wide—Santana can tell that much, at least.

Many of Santana's neighbors have already taken down their tents, including Blaine and Rory. Some of the tents lie in heaps on the ground, waiting for someone to come collect them, while other tents are just gone, already dismantled and transported away to the other side of town. The white city rests in shambles, jagged and full of holes, like a schoolchild's smile.

Sam catches Santana at the elbows and holds her at arm's length from himself, checking her over. "Santana, are you all right?" he asks breathlessly. "We were worried Puck might've found you or else—"

"I'm fine!" Santana interrupts him. "Is the wagon ready to go?"

Sam nods, "It is."

"Good," Santana says. "Let me grab my things and we can get out of here."

Only as she starts to turn away from Sam does Santana become aware that she and Sam aren't alone on the tent row. Someone stands a few yards behind Sam, trailing him. The person is too tall to be Rachel or the female Dragon Chang and too lean to be the male Dragon Chang. Under the dim light, Santana can scarcely make out the person's features, but she thinks it might be Kurt Hummel. She isn't certain if Kurt is with Sam or if he only appeared on the tent row because he heard shouting.

She doesn't have time to investigate.

Her head gives another throb, as violent if someone were trying to halve it with a chisel and hammer, and she turns away from Sam, skirts spinning around her legs in a twist as she moves in the direction of her tent.

But.

Something clamps down hard on her arm and yanks her out of Sam's grasp.

"There you are!"

First, Santana's hair obscures her vision, and then another pulse of white. Momentarily, she loses track of the horizon. Her feet trip over the grass as someone drags her forward. Strong fingers clench down on her bicep. Her captor jerks her, spinning her around so that she has her back to his belly. Only in passing does she see her captor's face.

Russell Fabray.

"Hey! Hey!" Sam yells, now facing Santana. "What're you do—?"

But then something jabs into Santana's neck, just at her collar. It's hard, metallic, menacing. There's also another thing near to whatever it is—paper, folded over, clenched in Mr. Fabray's fist. It rubs against Santana's skin, crushed between his fingers.

"Step away, son!" Mr. Fabray warns Sam.

Santana can't see what the thing at her neck is, but, facing Sam head on, she can see his reaction to it: he halts mid-stride, eyes widening so much that Santana can see the whites of them even under the cover of dark. Just at his heels, his pursuer, whom Santana can now clearly see is Kurt, stops, as well.

"Mother of God!" Kurt says, putting up his hands in surrender. His eyebrows lift up by his hairline. He glances from the thing at Santana's neck to Mr. Fabray to Santana herself, motionless where he stands.

Another throb breaks over Santana's skull, weakening her. She fights Mr. Fabray's hold but finds that she can do little against his strength. He clutches her left arm in his left fist, his fingers cuffed around her bicep, just below her shoulder. He presses the something into Santana's neck with his right hand. She can't see his face, with her back spun to him, but she can feel him breathing behind her, his breath hot on the top of her head, his belly heaving at her spine. He towers over her, dwarfs her.

"He thought he could pull one over on me, hiring a little Don Diego whore's daughter like you, but I knew from the second I laid eyes on you that you weren't any good!" Mr. Fabray growls, jabbing the something into Santana's neck again. "You haven't ever been to Rome in your life, have you? Have you?"

Before arriving at the circus, Santana had never met a mad person before, but after two weeks spent on the lists at the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie, she has met more mad people than she cares to admit, and Mr. Fabray is certainly one of them. Even without seeing his expression, Santana knows that Mr. Fabray is madder than Mrs. Schuester and madder still than his own daughter. He's the kind of mad that Santana has read about in Mr. Stevenson's and Mr. Poe's books.

Though she can't see what the object he presses into her neck is, she knows that it's a weapon.

That he means to harm her.

Animal fear blooms in Santana and she struggles more vehemently against Mr. Fabray, snarling and thrashing as she attempts to break his grip. She doesn't know what she's done to upset Mr. Fabray. She once read him tarot, but she hasn't spoken to him since then—only to his daughter.

To Quinn.

As if in confirmation to Santana's thought, Mr. Fabray gives Santana another jerk. "Where did you send her, nigger? Where did you tell her to go?"

"Mr. Fabray," Sam says, holding up his hands, trying to talk sensibly, "Santana didn't do anything. You should just let her go—"

Sam tries to take a step forward, but Mr. Fabray won't allow it. Mr. Fabray pulls the something away from Santana's neck and points it toward Sam instead, aiming it straight between Sam's eyes. For the first time, Santana sees the something clearly.

It's a pistol—and not a false model like the one Brittany waved around during the Glorious Fourth spectacular.

"Step away, son!" Mr. Fabray warns Sam again.

Sam halts on the spot, as if some spell had turned him to stone. Santana can see his pulse in his neck, so hard and fast that anyone looking at him might think he had just run for a long distance at a very fast pace.

"Oh my God!" Kurt says again, still rooted to his spot.

"You tell me where you sent my Lucy!" Mr. Fabray demands, aiming the pistol's barrel back at Santana's neck.

_Holy Jesus._

Santana can't breathe; there isn't any air left in the world. Her heart beats so loudly that it could be the bass drum in the circus band—or one-hundred bass drums, rather. Mr. Fabray thinks Santana knows where Quinn ran away to? But she doesn't. She didn't. She can't.

"I don't know!" Santana chokes, words coming out in a garble. "I don't know! I didn't send her anywhere—"

"Go get help, Kurt," Sam says out of the side of his mouth. "Go run for the police. Run! Now!"

Kurt heeds Sam immediately. He takes off at a sprint, as if bitten, dodging behind the nearest tents still standing. For a horrible split second, Santana fears that Mr. Fabray might shoot for him, but Mr. Fabray doesn't shoot. He just takes tighter hold of Santana.

Mr. Fabray is florid now, babbling. He shakes out the folded paper he holds in his pistol hand, moving both the firearm and the paper—a handwritten letter, Santana sees—just out in front of Santana's face. He reads aloud, at a furious pace.

_"'Daddy and Mother,_

_By the time you receive this note, I shall be long gone. You oughtn't to come looking for me. I've taken enough money from Daddy's wallet—$300—that I can tip anyone who assists me in my flight for keeping my whereabouts in confidence. No one will see me leave or remember where I go, even if I pass them by in broad daylight._

_I would apologize to you for the abruptness of my departure, but I find that I cannot bring myself to say that I am sorry when I am not. Actually, I would rather thank you for bringing me along to the circus, for if I had never been here, I might have never come to the decision to change my fate._

_Send my regards and deepest thanks to the circus girls Santana Puckerman and Brittany Pierce, for if it weren't for them showing me the beauty of a life lived freely and in doing what brings one joy, I never might have become brave enough to seek after that which shall ultimately give me my own greatest satisfaction._

_Their influence upon me has been most profound, though they might not have known it themselves. I shall be forever in their debt, and I wish them happiness of their own in whatever way they can find it._

_As for myself, I go off to seek my own fulfillment. Whether I succeed or fail in my endeavors, know that I am finally doing what is best for myself and that I shall never regret seizing this opportunity. I apologize to Arthur, but there shall be another girl for him, one who can love him well though I cannot._

_'Every kind act and thought, if but an unuttered wish, a cheer, a tiny brave flower, is imbedded in my memory as one of the pleasant things of my novel tour.'_

_My love,_

_For a last time, your Lucy'"_

Mr. Fabray froths as he reads, so that Santana feels his spit hit the back of her neck. Considering that Santana can barely read the letter herself, though it hangs just inches in front of her face, she supposes that Mr. Fabray must have it mostly memorized—that he's committed it to his mind in his desperation.

The instant he finishes relating the letter's contents, he moves the pistol barrel back against Santana's neck and gives Santana another shake. Santana's heart feels liable to explode in her chest. She still can't breathe, can't move.

"Tell me where you sent her!" Mr. Fabray demands again, digging the nose of the pistol so deeply into Santana's skin that it will most certainly leave a bruise there.

"I don't know! I don't know!" Santana shouts, hysteria overtaking her.

She drew the Death card, and this is it. Russell Fabray will shoot her dead because he thinks she sent his daughter away to some secret place.

Why couldn't Santana only have lied when Quinn asked her to?

"Please," Santana cries.

"Sir, she doesn't know where your daughter went!" Sam says, pleading on Santana's behalf. There are tears in his eyes, and he looks entirely stricken, like he'll be sick or break down if this confrontation lasts for one second longer. "You've got to let her go! You can't—you can't—"

"If I can't get it out of you, then I'll have the police at it!" Mr. Fabray bellows, his grip tightening on Santana's arm so much that it sends a shock of pain down through her fingers. "You think I don't know how weaseling your kind is? I'll have you arrested for extortion, kidnapping, and exercising improper influence over impressionable youths! You come into this camp and corrupt all the fine young women! You would have done better to stick to your own type!"

He wrenches Santana's left arm, hard, pulling her backward. To her horror, he starts to drag her down the tent row away from Sam. She digs her heels into the grass. She won't walk. Her head gives another god-awful throb, and a bolt of lightning cracks the sky. Santana shrieks but can't get away. Her eyes meet Sam's. He stands rooted to his spot, uncertain whether he ought to pursue Mr. Fabray or go for help.

Mr. Fabray still has his pistol jammed up against Santana's neck, to the pulse at her throat.

Sam can't very well fight him barehanded. It wouldn't do anyone any good.

"I-I'll go for Mr. Adams!" Sam stammers, his face so pallid white that he could be dead. "I'll go tell him what's happened, Santana! We'll come for you!"

He starts to turn away in the opposite direction, but Santana calls out to him.

"No, Sam! You have to go to the hotel! You have to get Brittany! Get her away from her father! He'll kill her, Sam! Please!"

Sam doesn't know what Santana saw in the cards, but Santana does. She remembers the daggers, the Death, the wrecked end. Even if Mr. Fabray will have the police after Santana—even if he means to shoot Santana with his pistol—Santana won't fail Brittany, not like she has before. Whatever else happens, Sam has to save Brittany.

"Please!" Santana shrieks.

The urgency in her voice jogs Sam into action. He meets Santana's eyes as a mighty thunder roll rambles overhead. He spares her a short nod. In the next instant, he takes off in the direction of the wagon bay.

Santana doesn't have the chance to watch him go, not with Mr. Fabray frog-marching her toward the midway. No matter how Santana struggles against Mr. Fabray's grasp, she can't even budge it. She feels trapped and hates her weakness in the face of his strength; he doesn't deserve what he has.

Once or twice, she thinks she sees other members of the company observing her distress. They hover over torn down tents and watch her from around corners, motionless and silhouetted where they stand, dumbfounded to see the man who was going to buy half the circus dragging the little yeller gypsy girl across camp with a pistol to her throat.

"Help me!" Santana begs them, but the strangers don't move.

They pretend not to see her, not to hear her, not to know that she requires aid.

Santana tries to resist Mr. Fabray by impeding his forward motion; she turns to deadweight in his arms, dropping to her knees to make it more difficult for him to haul her along. Unfortunately, her tactic succeeds at nothing but robbing her of her own footing. Mr. Fabray carries Santana by one arm just as easily as if Santana's whole body were paper-light.

(When Santana first met Mr. Fabray, she wondered if he hadn't once been a collegiate athlete, given his great stature.)

In the next instant, Mr. Fabray jackknifes Santana, dragging her around to his front. Her knees and feet batter over the grass, and her shoulder burns from the strain of supporting her whole body by its joint. She feels pain in so many places that she can't recognize them individually; she only knows that she hurts all over.

"Move along!" Mr. Fabray barks, scaring Santana onto her feet and forcing her forward at an unbalanced jog.

He gouges the pistol into the back of Santana's neck, holding it between two vertebrae on her spine.

"Please," Santana pleads, not sure what she means to ask for.

Mr. Fabray herds her under the billboard partition. In the distance, Methuselah trumpets to the heavens, and more guttural thunder sounds. Will Mr. Fabray actually shoot Santana? Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. They pass from the white city to the commercial side of camp, emerging onto the midway just beside Santana's own booth. All the past fairs and the shows seem impossibly far away, like something that happened to Santana in another lifetime.

Santana doesn't know where Mr. Fabray intends to take her. She thought he was going to summon the police. Does he have them waiting somewhere on the midway? Or has he given up on that plan entirely? Will he just shoot Santana himself and have done with it after all?

Mr. Fabray shunts Santana quickly across the pitch. "Get on, get on, get on," he orders through clenched teeth, steering Santana in the direction of the big top.

_Oh Jesus Christ._

Santana can count all of the times that she's entered the big top by way of its main doors on one hand. Now Mr. Fabray pushes her through them most unceremoniously, plunging her into the darkness of the tent. Santana can scarcely see and scarcely hear, not without a single light to illuminate her way, not with her heartbeat so loud in her own ears.

Mr. Fabray drives Santana forward, pistol still jammed against the nape of her neck, pushing at Santana's back with the flat of his hand and shooing her along as if she were a bad dog he meant to banish from someplace where she didn't belong.

After several dark and placeless steps, Santana's feet and shins hit the edge of the ring. She stumbles forward onto fours, the butts of her palms driving into the dirt, her knees and legs following afterward, scraping against the ring as she falls. She grunts and then yelps, cheek hitting the ground as she staggers all the way down, face-first. Mr. Fabray still clutches her arm, and he nearly trips over her, just managing to recuperate his balance without upending himself altogether.

"Get up!" he commands, yanking Santana roughly to her feet.

The sudden movement from low to high causes another wave of white to pass over Santana's vision. That same thin, airless feeling from before threatens to consume her again. Mr. Fabray has all but to heave her along. He drags Santana for a few more paces and then throws her. She twists as she falls, tripping over her own feet, and then.

For the second time in one day, Santana collides with something.

Hard.

Her back rams into a solid, immovable object, and all of the breath expels from her lungs at once. White explodes before her eyes, and then there's nothing—just deep, hungry black swallowing her up in a single gulp.

When Santana returns to herself, she has the distinct feeling that she may have just lost several seconds to a swoon. Pain emanates from her spine, and she wonders, in a stupid, jumbled way, if she didn't just break bones. Is she very hurt? Will she be able to stand? Everything in her feels shaky and shifted. She draws a rattling breath but can't seem to keep it. She draws another breath, forcing it down, despite how it cuts her throat like jagged glass. Tears obscure her vision, both from the impact and from everything else.

Through her haze, Santana realizes that she landed on her side and that her right arm lies crushed underneath her. She rests on her hip. She tries to peel herself from the ground, though some instinct tells her that she probably oughtn't to do so. She just has to see if she can stand, if she can get away, from something, something—

Mr. Fabray.

He steps over Santana, breathing like he had just swum laps in the sea in its choppiest state. Santana can't see him well enough to tell whether or not he still has his pistol in hand, but she can see the vague shadow of him through the dark, just enough to tell where his body is. He leans over her, and her whole body stiffens.

_Oh God, no, no._

But then he shifts something at Santana's side. She hears a clink—metal knocking into itself. More clinking. Her mind still swims, her thoughts difficult to hold, and yet she wonders what the sound at her side could be. What in the big top is made of metal?

Pain throbs up Santana's back and down the center of her skull. She thinks she might be sick soon. Everything blurs, and she struggles to draw another breath, to keep it in her long enough to do her good. She hurts everywhere.

Mr. Fabray seizes Santana's left wrist, pulling her into an upright position, so that she kneels upon the dirt. Santana tries to fight against him but finds that her body won't respond to her impulse. For a brief instant, she panics, remembering when her father used to tell her about his certain patients who suffered paralysis following traumatic injuries. She thinks of Arthur Adams in his wheeled chair. She forces herself to move, flinching against Mr. Fabray's grasp.

She can do it, at least.

She doesn't have the chance to make any escape, though.

Still holding Santana by the left wrist, Mr. Fabray crouches in front of her and reaches around her with his free hand, snatching up her right wrist, as well. With motion more deft than Santana would have thought possible for a man of his size, Mr. Fabray leans into Santana, his chest pressing up against her face until he forces her head backward, pinning it against whatever is at Santana's back.

Santana opens her mouth to scream but can't. She's eating waistcoat. It's smothering her. Mr. Fabray moves both of Santana's wrists into his one hand and reaches for the metal object behind Santana.

Another clink and then a clasp.

Tightness on Santana's two wrists.

Mr. Fabray pulls away from Santana, breathing more heavily than ever. "Let's see you get out of that," he wheezes, rising slowly to his feet. "You best come up with some answers about where you sent my Lucy before I return with the police. Last time there was a war in Minnesota, they hanged three-dozen Indians here. Don't think they'll mind hanging a Spanish belligerent like yourself, even if you are a lady. I'll see to it that you dance if she's not returned to me unharmed."

He wipes at something on his face, turning to go, but stops after a step.

"Remember the _Maine_, you little bitch," he says, spitting.

Santana flinches, expecting a gunshot.

But.

Mr. Fabray exits the big top, his heavy steps getting farther and farther away from where Santana sits. Santana knows enough not to try to stand until Mr. Fabray vacates the tent. She listens until she can't hear his footfalls anymore, remaining in place for another long minute afterward. Then, finally, she moves, setting her palms flat on the ground so that she can steady herself in preparation to stand.

Only.

She hears another clink.

Santana's arms meet resistance. She finds that though she can put her hands on the ground, she can't bring them in front of her body. Her muddled mind refuses to process what's happening. She struggles against her confinement. More pain pulses through her body. Though several minutes have elapsed since Mr. Fabray threw her, she still hasn't recovered from the impact. In fact, her mind seems to move increasingly slowly as time elapses. Something, something—

It takes Santana a very long while to realize where she is.

Mr. Fabray has chained her to the main timber supporting the big top.

He clapped her into one of the fetters that Jesse St. James uses to control his big cats during the show, putting both of Santana's wrists where there would usually be one single lion hock.

From memory, Santana knows that there are actually four shackles connected to the timber by thick bolts, each one attached to a length of chain longer than Santana herself is tall. During the lion taming act, the supes hurry the big cats from their cages on the back of a flatbed cart down into the ring while Jesse menaces the cats with his whip. The supes then immediately clap the cats into their respective irons, which are of a type that lock automatically. At the end of the act, one of the supes uses a key to release the cats as Jesse menaces the great beasts back up into their cages on the cart.

Mr. Fabray must have wrapped the chain attached to Santana's shackle around the timber several times, for when Santana strains against the shackle, it digs into her skin but doesn't budge. Her wrists sweat, pressed closely together. The metal feels so tight that it constricts her flesh, causing a tingle in the tips of her fingers.

Santana's consciousness ebbs.

Overhead, more thunder rolls. Lightning flashes, brightening the inside of the big top just long enough for Santana to see how entirely empty and vast it is before the scene turns dark again. Briefly, vaguely, Santana thinks of something that happened to her years ago, when she wandered through this tent with a beautiful girl, both of them bathed in secret lights.

* * *

><p>"Santana?"<p>

It's a voice Santana hadn't expected to hear again so soon—or maybe ever.

"Sam?"

Floppy, boyish footfalls pad across the floor through the darkness—clown shoes on dirt—and Santana sees a shadow move toward her. Sam trips a bit over the edge of the ring, scuffing his legs against it, but recovers himself without falling. He scampers over to where Santana kneels on the ground, dropping down just before her. His knees rest on her skirts, fanned out beneath the both of them.

"W-what did he do to you?" Sam asks, afraid to hear Santana's answer.

His hands find Santana in the dark, thumbing along the edge of her jaw and the contours of her cheeks, checking her for the damages that he knows are there but can't see with his eyes. He touches a spot just below Santana's lip, and she winces.

It's the place where Mr. Pierce punched Santana with his ring.

"S-sorry," Sam apologizes, dropping his hands to touch Santana's arms instead. He feels down her arms until he discovers the shackle about her wrists. "Santana?"

Only when Sam says her name again does Santana realize that she still hasn't responded to any of Sam's questions. Her thoughts fumble over each other, murky and fat. She struggles to make her lips move, to form the sounds she wants.

"You have to go find Brittany."

"Santana—"

"Sam! You have to find her. I'm locked up in here. There's nothing you can do for me."

"Did Mr. Fabray say he'd come back?"

"He went to fetch the police."

"For what? You didn't do anything wrong."

"They won't see it like that."

"That isn't fair, Santana. We have to do something—"

"Sam!"

The sharpness of Santana's own voice frightens even her; both she and Sam flinch, as if cut. For a few seconds, Santana's voice reverberates around the big top, knocking into the empty seats, clattering against the derelict circus equipment. Santana waits for the echo to stop. Her head gives another mighty throb, liable to crack down the center at any instant.

Silence.

Santana fights against the tightening in her throat. "Sam, please," she says, her voice quieter this time, pleading. "Please, you have to go find Brittany. Mr. Pierce, Sam. He'll kill her. People like me and people like her, we're not—"

Her throat breaks in a sob.

Of all the boys at the circus, Samuel Evans understands.

He flinches again but doesn't rise to his feet. For a long while, he doesn't speak. He doesn't leave. He breathes wet breaths, and Santana does, too. He clutches her arms just about the shackle, rubbing at the metal with his thumbs as if he could somehow weather it away by his touch.

Santana thinks he might be crying, like she is.

(When he speaks, she knows that it is so.)

"You make her really happy, Santana," Sam says, so softly that Santana can scarcely hear him, even though they're alone in a great empty space. "She really loves you."

Santana's heart breaks down fresh lines. She sobs again, gasping, and her skull gives a hard throb. "Thank you, Sammy," she manages.

She wishes she could find better words to say what she means than that, but maybe there aren't better words, after all.

Of all the boys at the circus, Samuel Evans understands.

He moves forward so slowly that he barely even moves at all, until finally his brow rests against Santana's, skin to skin. His breath rebounds against Santana's face and hers against his. The rules say that boy like him and a girl like Santana oughtn't to ever find themselves as close to each other as this, but somehow it feels good to break the rules today.

Important, even.

"May I?" Sam asks quietly, and Santana knows what he means to do, so she nods yes.

Sam hugs Santana tight to his body, his arms wrapped over her bound arms, her chin rested at his shoulder. Santana feels his ribs wrack, and her ribs wrack, as well. Sam mumbles something, and Santana thinks it might be an apology. Sam doesn't have anything to feel sorry for, though. He holds Santana for a long minute, demolishing senseless, arbitrary rules as if they were nothing, made only to be broken by his touch.

Santana remembers Sam on the day when he had his heart deeply hurt, how she had been so afraid to touch him at all back then.

She isn't afraid anymore.

"I'll go find her," Sam promises, swallowing hard, finally pulling away.

"You go find her," Santana repeats.

Sam stands, dusting off his slacks with his hands, slapping at his knees. "Once we get Britt, we'll come back for you," he says stubbornly.

Santana wants to disagree and tell Sam that once he finds Brittany, he should go find Miss Mary Jones, as well, and that the three of them should run away together—that they should find someplace safe—never mind Santana here in the tent.

For a second, it strikes her that they could be happy together, that Brittany could be Sam's little wife in name and Ma Jones his wife in heart, and no one would ever have to know their secret if they kept it well.

Sam could take care of Brittany, and at least then Brittany might be with friends, and Santana could face the end knowing that Brittany had a place.

Santana wants to tell Sam how handsomely it could all work out, maybe.

Somehow she can't force her lips to move, though.

In any case, Sam is a brave enough boy, and he can figure those things out on his own. Santana trusts him to do what she can't do for herself. She trusts him to use the gifts that he enjoys by birth that she could never win, no matter what she did to obtain them. She hears more floppy footfalls on the earth, at first slow and then quick, at a sprint. Thunder batters the sky overhead. Lightning strikes.

All at once, Santana is alone.

* * *

><p>She drifts through a sea of moonless black and shooting-star white, advancing on and receding from consciousness as though she were driftwood caught on the waves closest to the beachfront, always just away from the sand but so, so close to it, as well.<p>

In her more lucid moments, Santana wonders if Sam and Rachel have reached Brittany yet, and pines, harrowed up, because she and Brittany might never see each other again. She wonders why she laid those cursed cards but then stops herself, knowing that even her deepest regret won't change whatever will be.

Done is done.

Of all the pain in Santana's body, her heart hurts perhaps worst of all.

Guilt guts her, and she feels so unspeakably sorry—but also lonely and lost.

Where is her Brittany? This isn't ever how things turn out in storybooks, not in story about true lovers. Shouldn't the stars intervene for her and Brittany's sake? In her desperation, Santana strains again against her shackles but can neither escape them nor shake the massive timber at her back.

Rage wells in her chest at the stupidity and unfairness of it all. What had Brittany ever done to anyone to deserve such awful treatment? Why couldn't she and Brittany have just been happy? They should have taken their leave sooner. Santana hates herself for delaying them. If only she had governed herself better, Brittany wouldn't have paused for her, and they might have been able to run away before Mr. Pierce arrived at the tent. Thunder rumbles overhead, and Santana shrieks into the darkness, frustrated and in pain.

Her voice runs for a long distance before reverberating off the bleachers and far canvas wall, echoing back to her.

In it, she hears anger and heartbreak.

Fear.

Somewhere, Brittany is out there without her. Is Brittany frightened, too? Pent up somewhere and unable to get away? Santana hates it when Brittany feels afraid or sad or hurt. Santana's heart rips at its seams, and she sobs, leaning forward to rest her brow upon the dirt.

Oh please, just let Brittany be all right. Just allow Brittany to get away from all of this, to go somewhere where she doesn't have to be afraid. Even if the police hang Santana, let Brittany be happy and well. Let her go someplace where someone will love her deep and pure and true—even if that person can't be Santana, even if Brittany and Santana can never see each other again.

The movement from high to low causes another wave of white to whelm Santana's vision. She nearly sinks into the black. Pain throbs in her, aches in her, cuts through her all the way. In her muddied mind, Santana wonders if she isn't the only person left in the world now.

Is there even a circus anymore? What's become of Sam and Ma Jones? Of Rachel and Puck? Of the other circus youths? Of all the acts? Mr. Adams? The elephants? The white city?

Santana's consciousness ebbs, and she almost fades away.

She clings to the last thread of waking, listening for a world outside. She hears thunder crashing and wind skittering over the big top. Scuttle in the distance. An ill-defined din. Still no rain, though. Not even perceptible voices. Just the vague semblance of something that might be shouting, might be fear or protest. Maybe it's the circus on their way to the other side of town. Maybe Santana is missing a train that she really ought to take.

For a long while, she loses herself to black.

* * *

><p>Santana wakes to shattering air—no, exploding sound—no, gunshots.<p>

Is she dead? Did they shoot her? She flinches, two seconds too late. She's in pain everywhere. She tries to touch her hands to her belly and neck to check for wounds, but she can't move them. She can't see. Is she dead? Where's Brittany? She strains.

A clink.

Slowly, Santana returns to sense, as if she were emerging from a thick fog. She remembers her shackles, the big top, that she's trapped. She listens carefully, determining that she's alone. It's dark inside the tent except for occasional flashes of lightning, which illuminate the empty spaces around the stage in odd corners and at strange angles.

Now Santana can most definitely hear human noise outside—men shouting in deep, angry voices, the sharp tinker of breaking glass, a cacophony of riotous property damage going on probably just along the midway near the tent. Santana considers calling out. Should she draw attention to herself? Would anyone come for her? Would they try to break the chains that Mr. Fabray has put upon her? Or would they try to hurt her in her vulnerable position?

If she knew she could yell and have a friend hear her voice, Santana would yell immediately. As it is, she isn't certain what's most dangerous: remaining hidden here in the dark or inviting someone into the tent with her. She tries to think but finds her mind stupid and slow to work for her. Her head still throbs. She chases after her thoughts as if they were papers stolen away from her on the wind.

But then another matter captures her attention.

The smell of something warm, oily, and harsh.

Smoke.

The smell comes from a long way off, maybe from somewhere behind the big top in one of the backstage areas. Santana might think that it had wafted off a cooking or watch fire, but it strikes her that it's too strong—that because the smoke has already made its presence known in the big top, it must come from a sizeable blaze.

Her hackles rise.

Though Santana strains her neck, she can't see behind herself. Her hair is in the way, and shadows blanket the tent. She looks directly up, craning to see through the holes in the big top roof—the selfsame ones through which Brittany's colorful lights shine during the daytime. She sees only dark, a phantom heaviness that moves as fluidly as a snake on its belly but never pulls back or breaks form.

Lifting her head causes another wave of white to swarm her. Her head throbs and she immediately lowers her gaze, putting it back towards the floor. Everything is dizzy, rushed. A tickle stirs in her chest and she coughs. How close is the smoke? The fire?

And then she feels it at her back.

The faint lick of heat.

Santana jerks but can't turn all the way around due to her chains. It is as if she were sitting at the mess table, her back to the hearth, fire heat settling into her blouse and hair and the skin on her bare shoulders. The warmth isn't uncomfortable. Even so, Santana can't help but squirm. She doesn't like knowing that there is a fire nearby without being able to see it.

Maybe some of the men outside have started a bonfire to pass the night, but maybe it's something other than that, something less controlled.

Santana decides to try her voice.

Her head throbs, and she calls out. "Is anyone there? Hello?"

She hates how small and frightened she sounds against the darkness and hopes that someone will hear her. Even if the person decided not to free her or couldn't do so without the keys to the chains, he or she might at least settle Santana's mind concerning the fire—tell her that it's nothing and that she's all right.

For a long while, Santana waits. She coughs a few more times, the tickle at her throat turning into something more persistent and choking. She isn't sure if she only imagines it, but now that she has an awareness of the smoke, she can't help but smell and taste it everywhere. Is the heat at her back increasing?

Santana struggles once more against her bonds, trying to turn herself, shaking her head so as to rearrange her hair on her shoulders. She twists as far back as she can, her neck and spine hating her for making them work so hard after an injury. At first, she sees nothing, but then she catches something from the corner of her eye: a wavering glow somewhere just beyond her, something illuminating the far side of the tent.

Her heart stutters in her breast.

_Holy Jesus._

More animal fear bursts in Santana, and she struggles onto her feet, trying to stand. Her bonds won't allow her to reach her full height, no matter how she pulls and yanks against them. She remains at a crouch as she tries to slip her wrists through the shackles one at a time, but metal catches against her bangles and bones. Her arm muscles strain, and her shoulder nearly wrenches out of socket. Something hisses at her back.

The big top is on fire.

"Help!" Santana screams out, no longer concerned with dangers outside the tent. "Help! Please! Somebody! Fire!"

Though Santana can hear human voices outside the tent, no one can seem to hear her. She writhes and rollicks against her chains, not caring if she breaks her own bones, if only she can free herself. Despite how she kicks and scrabbles against the dirt, she can't manage to stand to her full height. The shortness of her chain prevents her from reaching anything higher than a hunker.

"Somebody help me!" Santana screams out again, trapped, trapped, trapped.

No one will hear her, of course, and even if someone did, why would they stop to help her? Santana can only imagine that most of her friends fled the white city a long while ago. She's alone, helpless.

For a second, anger flares in her.

How senseless and how stupid that she should die in a fire! One month ago, she lived in a brownstone cottage in Gramercy Park. She spent her days reading and doing handiwork. There was nothing dangerous or violent in her life at all.

How did she end up at the heart of a failing circus with the big top burning down around her?

It isn't fair that she should only have just begun to experience anything worthwhile—friendship, life, and love—to have it all so suddenly and cruelly stolen away from her. She had only ever wanted just one thing. Would it truly have been so awful for her to have it?

A pang shoots through Santana's heart, and she doubles over, still strained against her chains.

Her anger fades away, and suddenly she feels only feels unspeakably afraid.

She doesn't want to die.

Of all the things she had to fear today, she hadn't expected that fire would be one of them—that it would be the thing to do her in after so many gypsy acts and nights spent around an open hearth. Now fully alert, Santana can feel heat welling and shifting somewhere behind her. On the edge of her vision, she sees flickers of oranges and reds. She coughs as the air turns thicker around her.

"Please!" she shrieks, calling out once more in desperation. Something pops and crackles at her back. "Sam! Brittany! Anybody!"

Another pop, this one so loud that it sounds like a gunshot, fires somewhere to Santana's left. Santana jolts, ducking down, trying to avoid the smoke and the heat, but finds that she has little latitude to escape from either hazard.

By now, the tent has turned bright inside, so much so that if it weren't for the smoke, Santana could see in front of herself. As it is, a thick haze hangs in the air. Santana's eyes sting, and no matter how she blinks, she can't seem to wet them. She coughs mightily, a sharp pain in her ribs. When her head throbs again, she cries out in pain, voice strangled and hoarse.

Then, a draft.

Smoke and air rush past Santana in a blast. She closes her eyes against the sudden flash of heat. She tastes hot and burnt in her mouth and smells them, acrid, in her nostrils. Everything happens quickly, and she wonders if she won't die soon.

But then.

The heat recedes, and when Santana opens her eyes, some of the smoke in the air has dissipated. The scene before her clears. She draws breath as if she were a drowning person who had somehow reached the surface of the water, filling her lungs as much as she can. She coughs again.

"Santana?"

Never has Santana heard a more welcome sound than her own name, and especially not from such a voice as the one which hails her now. Everything in Santana rises, her very soul called to attention.

"Brittany!" she shouts, struggling to stand.

She searches the haze and sees the outline of a human figure—no, of an angel—running to meet her from across the ring.

Brittany comes to Santana at a stoop, hunched over something. At first, Santana thinks that Brittany might have something cradled in her arms, but then Santana sees that the something is actually Brittany's arm itself—that Brittany clutches her right arm to her breast with her left arm, supporting its weight and wincing with each new stride.

Santana's heart clenches in her chest.

Oh God, how badly is Brittany hurt?

Brittany grimaces, fumbling over the lip of the ring, crossing the distance along the floor and dropping down just in front of Santana. Though she opens her mouth immediately to speak, Santana preempts her from doing so.

"Britt, what happened to your arm? Are you all right? Where are Sam and Rachel?" she asks, unable to focus on any one thing, her eyes and heart and head everywhere all at once.

Brittany searches Santana as she formulates her answer, her eyes sweeping over Santana's face—lingering at Santana's chin—and searching out all of Santana's little hurts and wounds. Brittany presses her own hurt arm to her chest, holding it awkwardly between her raised knee and her body where she kneels, and then uses her free hand to read Santana's face, trusting touch more than she trusts her sight through the blaze. Her thumb traces over the angles of Santana's cheeks, over Santana's jaw and temples, the soft skin behind Santana's ear.

"Daddy took me to the hotel," she says, pressing her forehead up against Santana's, wanting as much contact with Santana as possible. She speaks in staccato, fearful and almost dizzy. "We were on the second floor, and he locked me in the room while he went downstairs to talk with Mr. Adams. I heard Sam shouting outside the window, so I opened it up, and there Sam was in a wagon with that acrobat, Mr. Chang. When I asked Sam where you were, he said that Mr. Fabray had dragged you off. Even though Sam didn't know how to get me down from the room, he said he'd figure something out. But I heard somebody coming up the hall, and I-I thought it might be Daddy, and I-I—I couldn't wait, Santana. So I jumped."

"You jumped out the window?" Santana repeats, astounded.

"Out the window," Brittany confirms. She shrugs her shoulders, indicating her hurt arm. "I landed mostly all right," she says. "I just had to come find you." Her voice starts to turn thicker, and she blinks several times, her eyelashes flittering against Santana's face. "Sam said that Mr. Fabray had a gun, a-and I didn't know where you were, a-and then I got to the midway, and I saw the tent was on fire. We have to get you out of here."

Santana nods, her brow still pressed to Brittany's. "Who'll have the key, Britt? Does Jesse have one? Ken?" she asks, struggling to think sensibly, despite how her head still pulses with hurt and her thoughts muddle more and more with every passing minute.

"I don't know where Jesse is," Brittany frets, "and Ken skipped camp after they—"

She trails off, suddenly nervous, her eyes flickering back and forth between Santana's.

There's something she hesitates to say.

"After they what?" Santana asks.

Brittany draws a sharp breath, readying herself. "After some of the supes shot Mr. Fabray," she finishes. A stricken expression passes over her face. She knows what her news recalls and clearly dreads the reaction it will stir up in Santana.

"Is he—?" Santana wonders.

"He's dead," Brittany confirms. She thumbs over Santana's ear, trying to soothe Santana before Santana breaks.

But Brittany doesn't know.

If Mr. Fabray is dead, then so is Santana's one residual hope. With the exception of the old woman, whose fate Santana may never know, everyone for whom Santana has ever read cards has died, leaving only herself and Brittany to go. Santana drew the Death card for either one or both of them just an hour or two ago. Now they sit huddled together in a burning tent, surrounded by enemies on every side of them.

Brittany sees the doubt settling into Santana. She presses a kiss to Santana's lips in an effort to distract Santana from it. "Hey," she coos, her free hand sliding to the back of Santana's neck, their faces still so close together that Santana can see every line and loveliness on her skin.

"Hey," Santana says back, automatic.

"Sam went to find Mr. Adams inside the hotel while I came back here for you," Brittany says. "Mr. Adams has a master key to every lock at the circus. When Sam explains what happened, they'll come back here in the wagon. They're probably on their way right now. They'll be here, Santana. They'll come."

Brittany kisses Santana again, this time deeper and longer, impressing her good faith not just upon Santana's lips but into Santana's being, nodding it there as many times as she can. Brittany keeps her eyes open through the kiss, and Santana does too, feeling herself unravel against the gilt of so many tiger flecks and a sea of perfect, starlit blue.

Santana tries to hang onto the kiss, to remain in it and memorize it, a part of her wondering if she'll ever get to feel Brittany like this again.

She wants to believe that Mr. Adams will come, that he'll bring the key.

But.

"Britt," she says, an awful, jagged lump lodging in her throat, "you should go wait outside until Sam and Mr. Adams come. It's getting hard to breathe in here, and I don't want—"

"I'll wait in here with you," Brittany says firmly. She presses butterfly kisses to Santana's top lip, to Santana's nose and Santana's cheek and to just under Santana's left eye. Her fingers tangle in the soft hair at the back of Santana's neck. "They'll come soon, okay?" she repeats, locking eyes with Santana, holding her.

"Okay," Santana agrees.

No sooner does Santana speak than she hears an awful ripping sound somewhere behind her. Santana flinches as Brittany checks over her shoulder, looking to where Santana can't look for herself. Santana sees red and orange reflected bright against the sheen of Brittany's eyes, painting hellfire against Brittany's perfect blue. She also sees a flash of fear.

"Britt, what—?" she starts to ask, but a flare of heat and a great gust of smoke curtail her question.

Suddenly, it feels as if she and Brittany were inside an oven.

Both girls cough, hard, gagging on smoke so thick that they could chew it. Santana tugs on her chains again, metal digging in against her skin until it starts to burn, and she winces. The blaze billows at her back, illuminating the whole tent in vivid, infernal red, long shadows spread out from the bleachers and ring and the acrobat's platforms above. Santana coughs but can't clear her lungs. Needling tears nip at her eyes. The vastness of the big top fills with brown-gray smoke.

Brittany leans forward on her knees, reaching behind Santana to work at the chains with her one good hand. Finding them locked in place, Brittany jerks the bolt at Santana's back, trying to make the tent timber attached to it budge. When the timber resists Brittany's first attempts to jostle it, Brittany stands up, moving past Santana to push on it using her uninjured side.

From her place on the ground, Santana joins in Brittany's efforts, gritting her teeth and leveraging herself against the solid mass at her back, plowing into it with her shoulder.

Though she and Brittany exert themselves, throwing their whole bodies against the mast, their efforts come to naught. The timber must weigh at least one ton, if not two or three tons, altogether. It takes an army of supes with pulleys and levers and crank cranes at their disposal to move the timber into and out of and into the ground every morning; two slight girls, battered and bruised, neither one of them with any tools, will never as much as cause the thing to quiver in its place.

Panic grips Santana even more tightly than before.

_Oh God._

She and Brittany cough again, and it strikes her that they both sound so very young—like little girls with the ague.

Mr. Fabray is dead, and Sam and Mr. Adams won't make it back to the big top in time.

"You have to go!" Santana barks, trying to urge Brittany toward the entrance to the big top. Brittany stands only one-hundred yards from safety; if she would only run outside, she would come to no harm. She could rendezvous with Sam and escape.

Brittany meets Santana's eyes. When she speaks, she does so much more calmly than Santana might have expected.

"No, I don't," she says, crouching back down in front of Santana.

She wears a hint of fire in herself, like she does whenever she tells Santana that cards are only cards and that there are no such things as curses.

Just then, there comes another awful ripping sound, and something crashes to the ground near the back of the tent. Santana suspects that the bleachers nearest to the heart of the blaze have begun to collapse, their wooden legs burned out from under them. Both she and Brittany cough and choke, unable to clear their lungs. Soot smudges Brittany's cheeks and brow and tinges her nostrils and the corners of her mouth, as if someone had rubbed bootblack over all the edges of her face. It's so incredibly hot in the tent and so incredibly bright. Brittany's skin almost shines.

"I'm not leaving you in here," Brittany insists. She cups Santana's face in her good hand, pressing another kiss to Santana's forehead. Her lips feel fevered to the touch.

Another crash and vicious pop.

Unless Sam and Mr. Adams arrive in the next few minutes, the big top will surely fall in on itself, engulfed in flames, and Santana and Brittany will burn to death.

They can scarcely breathe as it is.

Santana coughs, her lungs hot in her chest, as if she had taken a breath just above the lighted wick of a candle. Flecks of ash and cinders have begun to rain down onto her and Brittany's hair. If they were to look up to the hole at the top of the big top, they would most certainly find the roof in flames above them.

Santana can't bring herself to look up, though.

She can't look at anything but Brittany.

(Not until the end of the act.)

Santana nuzzles her and Brittany's foreheads together again, unable to touch Brittany in any other way than that, her hands still bound. Both she and Brittany whimper, and, when their cheeks brush, Santana feels tears upon their skin, smudged over the soot. Santana tries to wet her lips but her tongue is too dry in her mouth. She tastes char and feels blisters.

"Don't be scared, darlin'," Brittany whispers, voice barely audible over all the outside noise.

Santana's invisible string gives a tug in her chest.

"BrittBritt," she chokes, rubbing her face against Brittany's, kissing between words, "I-I love you so m-much. I'll love you for—"

She sobs, unable to speak past the wedge in her throat. Her vision blurs, and her head throbs again. The harder she cries, the worse the pain becomes. With fumbling movements, she kisses Brittany, nodding them into a place where she can write out love against Brittany's mouth again and again and again, wanting desperately for Brittany to know what she can't manage to say aloud.

"I don't regret loving you and I won't ever," Santana sobs, no voice behind her words; just the barest of breaths. "I-I'm glad I came to the circus and m-met you. Y-you're my best thing, Britt."

The whole time Santana talks, Brittany watches her with deep, reverent eyes, her chin trembling, and her hand shaking along Santana's jaw. Her gaze never falters. It remains steady and sure, though every other part of Brittany quakes. Only when Santana can't bring herself to say another word does Brittany move, darting forward, crashing her and Santana's lips together. She kisses Santana hard, her teeth grazing the soft parts of Santana's mouth, trading their breaths to each other.

Santana tastes salt on Brittany and burning.

Blood.

Both girls gasp against each other, and Santana lets out a squeaking sob.

(She would hate Brittany for being so stubborn and staying with her if she didn't love Brittany so.)

Santana's chest aches so terribly that Santana wonders if her breastbone hasn't split down the center for all of the mingled guilt, shame, loyalty, devotion, sadness, and love jammed under it. What did Santana ever do to win this perfect, brave girl's heart? How did Santana finally find her lucky thing? How did Brittany ever find her?

Brittany breaks away from the kiss, gasping, though whether from the intensity of the kiss itself or from the choking smoke surrounding her and Santana or from both of those things, Santana can't say. Brittany's right arm hangs limply at her side, but she doesn't seem to pay it any mind. She coughs, hard, flinching at some pain, and then finds Santana again, locking their gazes, pupil-to-pupil.

Her eyes are all that Santana can see—cattish and pretty, the kind of blue that dye and paint can never exactly replicate.

Brittany thumbs over Santana's cheek again and again with her left hand and presses her and Santana's brows together again. When she speaks, she can't manage anything more than a tight whisper. Still, Santana hears nothing but her voice.

"Santana, can I tell you a secret?" Brittany cries. "Y-you saved me, darlin'. Before you came to the circus, I was s-stuck. Daddy and I—we weren't living. We hadn't been for a long time. I n-never imagined anything about the future or what c-could be because I j-just didn't think there was anything for me. I thought nothing would ever change. But then you came, Santana, and you changed everything. You were just for me. It w-was like you woke me up when I didn't even know I'd been sleeping. I could imagine everything with you, Santana—everything good there was or ever could be, with just you and me. And I want-wanted it so bad. I love you so much, so much. T-thank you for loving me. For letting me love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

She slathers kisses against Santana's lips and Santana's face and everywhere that they can touch each other.

Just then, something behind them gives a terrible, creaking groan. Something crashes heavy on the ground. The girls jolt but don't break eye contact. Brittany holds Santana tighter. The smoke is so thick that neither one of them could see the other if there were anything more than just an inch between them. Santana's lungs and the inside of her nose burn. Fear redoubles inside of her. She knows she can do nothing to save herself, but she can't stand the thought of Brittany staying in the tent for another minute.

"BrittBritt, please," she pleads, "you have to go outside. Please, Britt, just go, just go and be happy, go live, Britt. Please, please."

Brittany gags on a sob, pressing her forehead closer to Santana's. She looks as if she were swallowing glass shards, her expression one of agony. "No," she whispers, "no, Santana. I can't."

"Britt, please, that's all I want—that's what I wish."

Santana holds Brittany's gaze as if they were standing before the board. She ghosts a kiss over Brittany's lips, not even flinching when there's another crash somewhere close behind them. For a long while, Brittany doesn't move, doesn't breathe. She stares at Santana, heartbroken and shaking. Santana keeps her fast. Please, please, please.

"I'll go."

Santana sees it in Brittany's eyes almost more than she hears it.

"I'll go," Brittany repeats.

Santana nods, her heart squeezing in her chest. She feels a queer, blanketing peace. For a moment, there's nothing—no circus, no cards, no other persons alive—just Santana and Brittany, Brittany thumbing over the back of Santana's neck, her thread ring pressed against Santana's skin where her palm rests, open-handed, soft.

"Thank you."

"Do you want me to go now?"

"You could stay for maybe just a little while longer."

"Maybe just a little while."

Neither one of them moves.


	18. Epilogue

July 10th, 1920

A.P. Correspondence

"An Item of Local Interest: In Address to Certain Rumors Surrounding the So-Called 'Lady Knife Thrower' at the Tri-County Summer Carnival"

As of late, citizens have reported, with some enthusiasm, that certain workers at the traveling carnival visiting the outskirts of our town are of a "peculiar sort." Specifically, the people have bandied about gossip that the knife thrower at this carnival is in point of fact a lady.

Being a servant to the public interest, your correspondent took it upon himself to uncover the truth concerning this most titillating and intriguing bit of gossip; I arranged with the manager of the carnival to meet in conference with the knife thrower during the early hours yesterday, before any of the carnival workers had set to their usual employment, entertaining comers to their fête from the town.

I arrived at the carnival grounds just before the rising of the sun and was directed to a far side of the carnival operations, where I discovered the domicile of this knife thrower, whom I encountered waiting for me out-of-doors.

For as exciting as have been all the speculations surrounding the matter of this knife thrower's identity, being loyal to the truth, I must report to you that all of these fantastical rumors are unequivocally false.

I found a man well-read and genteel, of no especial physical distinctions. He welcomed me to his home and introduced me to his wife/assistant, a Mexican Indian. Though childless and of humble circumstances, neither the knife thrower nor his wife seemed to pity their own situation.

The couple offered me coffee and breakfast, a kindness which I was only too happy to accept from them, given the earliness of the day. They then most patiently answered my questions for the next two hours, demonstrating commendable good humor and forthrightness concerning their own circumstances. Their candor and fine nature carried our conversation until at last they had to excuse themselves to ready for the opening of the carnival.

As soon as they had sufficiently prepared and the carnival had opened for the day, I took the opportunity to observe the couple at their act, which they performed as consummate professionals, unerring in their skill.

Though it may disappoint the readership to hear it, your correspondent must be honest in his report.

Most passersby wouldn't spare the knife thrower and his wife a second glance, were it not for the announcer calling attention to them outside their act. In truth, they are unfailingly ordinary folk, unassuming in every wise.

For all the hearsay surrounding them, their only distinguishing characteristic is this: a deep and extraordinary trust in each other.

—Q.F.


End file.
